


Unity

by elumish



Series: Referential Illusion [1]
Category: Stargate - All Series, Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: F/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-17
Updated: 2015-06-09
Packaged: 2018-03-23 10:03:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 30,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3764008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elumish/pseuds/elumish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What want these outlaws conquerors should have But History's purchased page to call them great?</p><p>With the Earth under attack from an enemy they're not sure they can defeat, Russia and China decide they want Atlantis back to defend the planet. But Atlantis is dealing with troubles of their own--and they may not survive long enough for a decision to be made.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Report 1: Causes of the Chasm

**Author's Note:**

> This is set post-canon, after the return of Atlantis to the Pegasus Galaxy. I'm ignoring most of the canon of the (book) series Legacy because it's not super helpful for the story. I am however including some version of the canon set up by Stargate Resistance.
> 
> This is theoretically going to be the first in a series of three.
> 
> Also, the quote in the summary is from Lord Byron.

> Both reports of the initial incident and after-action reports indicate that the root of the split was the fact that the military contingent of the Atlantis Expedition (AE) consisted entirely of United States military personnel. While the scientific divisions all contained members from a variety of nations, the lack of foreign military led to the Chasm (for origins of the name, see Chapter 7). As such, the blame can be placed squarely on the shoulders of the United States military for their patent distrust of foreign militaries.

-Marcel Dumas, author of _The Chasm: The War that Spanned Galaxies_

> While it may be easy to speculate that the United States military was totally at blame for the actions that occurred in Stargate Command and on Atlantis, it disregards the indispensable role of Dr. Rodney McKay, the Head of Atlantis’s Science and Research Division. He was reportedly one of the most relied-on members of the Expedition, a Canadian who was according to all records frequently openly derisive of the United States Military and their decisions.

-Sarah Hanley, author of _Where it All Went Wrong: Power and Death in Atlantis_ , and contributing writer for the New York Times

> To call Dr. Meredith Rodney McKay Canadian would be to call Albert Einstein German. While McKay’s allegiance may have at one time been to Canada, that ended the moment the Central Intelligence Agency came to his doorstep when he was a child. On their dime, he completed the rest of his schooling, including two PhDs, and then immediately left to work for the United States government. From there, it was only a small step to the Atlantis Expedition, where his allegiance almost instantaneously transferred once again—this time to Atlantis and its inhabitance, namely then-Major John Sheppard.

-Chin Yeung, author of _Rodney McKay: Richelieu or Bormann?_

> For those who have studied the Chasm for any extended period of time, it should be abundantly clear that the group most at fault was not the United States military but instead the First Atlantis Reconnaissance Team (AR-1), which was made up half by non-Earthborn humans and only one-quarter by members of the US Air Force. AR-1 was regarded by members of the Atlantis Expedition with much the same hero worship that members of Stargate Command viewed SG-1 prior to Colonel Carter’s final transfer from it, or possibly more so, given the isolated fox-hole mentality forced by Atlantis’s position in the universe. When they said “jump,” people asked how high—and looked to whoever was in charge of Atlantis at the time for forgiveness later. That should have given those in charge a hint that there would be a problem years before the Chasm actually occurred.

-Oscar Cho, author of _The Chasm_

> When people talk about blame, they like to forget the group that was actually responsible for what took place: foreign militaries. They were the ones who took initial action, leaving Atlantis—and Stargate Command—with no choice but to defend themselves. To say that this would have been solved by having members of those militaries on Atlantis is nonsense. The foreign militaries would have made the same decisions, and instead of a coordinated effort to repel them, Atlantis’s gate-room would have splintered into civil war. There would have just been a bloodbath, and then the remaining scientists would have been left with a disintegrating city and no military power to speak of. Assuming the preferred end goal was for Atlantis to survive, this is the best possible result.

-Karen Mier, author of _A New Atlantis_

 


	2. 1

“Get back to the gate.” Sheppard spun to shoot at the Wraith chasing them, then turned back to keep running. They had about two hundred feet left to go, but it was all open space; they were entirely out of the tree cover.

Out of his peripheral vision, he saw Ronon shooting, and ahead Teyla was almost at the gate, Rodney not far behind. “You need to go faster.”

Rodney turned his head just enough to look at Sheppard, snapping, “I’m going as fast as I can without _dropping the ZedPM_.”

It was a good point, though Sheppard wasn’t particularly in the mood to acknowledge it. The mission had started as a pretty simple exploration of what had looked like an unoccupied planet, which led to the good—them finding what looked like a mostly-charged ZPM in some Ancient ruins—followed by the bad—the Wraith showing up. He wasn’t sure if it was because they pulled the ZPM, though if it was that might mean some bad things about trying to plug it in, but whatever the reason, the Wriath were on their ass and gaining fast.

Teyla started dialing, and he turned to check her program just as a Wraith fired. The smell of ozone and burning hit him first, and his leg dropped out from under him like it couldn’t take his weight anymore. Stumbling, he twisted to catch himself on his side instead of his face, shifting his P90 so he didn’t land on it or accidentally shoot himself in the process.

Ronon was to him in a second, arm sweeping under his arms to bodily lift him off the ground and set him on his feet. “Lazing around, old man?” he asked even as they started running towards the gate again, an absurd amount of Sheppard’s weight being carried by Ronon, who was even then occasionally turning to shoot at the Wraith following them. Or at least that was what it felt like, because there was no way they would be moving that fast—or, really, moving at all—if Sheppard’s leg had been carrying more than a negligible amount of weight. As it was, it still felt like it was on fire, every step jarring it and sending more agony through it.

Rodney had made it through the gate, and Teyla was covering them now, concern clear on her face in the brief second when her eyes met his. He wasn’t sure what his leg looked like, but he had a feeling he really didn’t want to know. A few seconds later, they reached the gate, skirting around the other side of the DHD from where Teyla was standing so there was no chance of her shooting them. Not that she was likely to do so, but being shot once was enough for the day.

They made it through the gate, Sheppard lurching into McKay’s back when they rematerialized in the gate room. He turned, snapping, “What are you— _Sheppard_.” He turned towards the control room, shouting, “Medical team to the gate room.”

Ronon herded them both forward, pulling even more of Sheppard’s weight onto him as Sheppard’s leg buckled entirely under them. Keller’s team hurried into the gate room, gurney with them, and settled him him down on it, and his leg hurt enough that he wasn’t up for arguing. Screaming, maybe, that wasn’t going to happen in the middle of the gate room.

And then something pressed against his leg, and everything faded into static.

—

Sheppard really wanted to get out of the infirmary. It wasn’t just that the entire population of Atlantis seemed to have medical emergencies over the past few days, which meant that all of them got to gawk at him stuck in the bed. It was that he never slept in infirmaries.

He wasn’t really sure how anyone did. There was always too much noise, too much light, and too many people, all of whom wanted, at the most inopportune times, to poke him with things.

“Your leg has third degree burns.” Keller stared down at him with crossed arms. “You need at least another week in the infirmary before I can let you go anywhere.”

“I’ll stay in my room.” Or his office. Or the control room. Probably the control room, where he could keep track of what was going on. As opposed to being in the infirmary, where there wasn’t a thing he could do if something went wrong.

“I doubt that, Colonel.” She handed him a headset, which he took and fitted in his ear before she could take it away from him. “I’ll let you keep that as long as you agree to rest.”

He nodded, then pressed the comm button. “McKay?”

“ _What?_ ”

“Have you got the ZPM working yet?” McKay had told him that the ZPM didn’t seem to be initiating properly, but that had been two days ago. Damn, but he hated being out of touch with the rest of Atlantis. It was his job, damn it, and just because Keller as CMO outranked him when it came to medical decisions, it didn’t mean she should be able to get him kept out of the loop.

And he knew Lorne could—did—do a good job as his replacement, but he wasn’t good at sitting still, never had been.

“—running some tests, but it seems as though the internal structure was either corrupted or intentionally restructured in an attempt to create some sort of safeguard to limit use, though it may also have to do with—”

“McKay.”

“No.” McKay sounded pissed, which was basically par for the course, so Sheppard wasn’t too concerned. “No, it isn’t working, and it would be going faster if _everyone would stop bothering me and let me work._ ”

Okay, then. “Try to remember that you do need to sleep sometimes.”

“Sleep takes too much time. No, Zalenka, what are you—I already ran that test. No, no, you don’t need to run it again, it’s just going to waste time, and—”

And that was when Sheppard turned the comm off. Because listening to McKay rant at Zalenka was not on his list of things that he wanted to do with his time. Unless he could actually be there in person; then it was fairly entertaining, if only just to watch McKay’s facial expressions.

Ronon wandered in an hour or so later—another problem with the infirmary, it was hard to keep track of time—and slouched down in the chair next to him, arms crossed across his chest. “Still lounging around in bed?”

“You know me.”

“Yeah.” Ronon clapped his hand on Sheppard’s shoulder, so hard he actually pressed Sheppard a couple of inches down into the bed. “Well, get up soon. I need someone to spar with. The Marines are all wusses.”

“Thanks. You ready to help me blow this joint?”

“Any time.” He looked over at Keller, who was watching them from her computer, then said, “Though maybe we should wait until the warden isn’t looking.”

“Good plan. The city still standing without me?”

“We haven’t blown anything up yet.” Ronon sounded vaguely disappointed about that fact. “Teldy’s team is working with the Athosians on some poisonous animal problem, and nobody else is off-world. We—”

Whatever else he had been going to say was lost under the sound of klaxons, and Sheppard bolted upright in his infirmary bed, ignoring the pain that sent through his leg. Pressing a finger to his comm, he demanded, “Control room, report.”

“Scanners just reported two hives dropping out of hyperspace to establish geosynchronous orbit over the mainland.”

Shit. _Shit._ Sheppard swung his legs over the edge of the bed, bracing himself for the pain, and for once accepted Ronon’s help as he wrapped an arm around him to keep him standing. “I’ll be there in a minute. McKay, get to the control room.”

As McKay snapped, “I can do more good here, trying to get this ZedPM to work,” Keller hurried over, speaking over him to say, “You’re not going anywhere.”

McKay’s issue was more pressing, so he told him, “Fine. We need it on-line ASAP.”

“I _know_ that, Sheppard.”

Keller was trying to get around Ronon to him, so he turned his attention to her, saying, “I need to go.”

“What you need to do is stay in bed so you can heal. Major Lorne is in command right now.”

“I’m not staying in bed while the Wraith are here. If nothing else, they need me in the chair.” He looked up at Ronon, who looked like he was about five seconds from shooting his way out. A sentiment Sheppard agreed with at the moment. “Let’s go.”

“Colonel—”

“Ronon will keep me from falling over, won’t he?”

“Yeah.” And with that they were heading out of the control room, Sheppard accepting a pair of crutches one of the braver nurses handed him on their way out. He tucked them under his armpits, pulling away from Ronon so he could walk on his own. More or less.

The closest transporter was down the hall from them, and he could feel Ronon vibrating with tension next to him, but he didn’t rush ahead of Sheppard, instead walking slightly behind him, like he was ready to catch him if he fell. Which was honestly—though he would never admit it aloud, especially not to Ronon—a possibility, given the way his leg felt at the moment. But he had gone onto a hive ship with a hole in his abdomen; he could walk down a hallway with some burns on his leg.

Woolsey was pacing back and forth in the control room, as much as Woolsey ever paced, and his eyes lit up, as much as his eyes ever lit up, when Sheppard arrived. Sweat was rolling down Sheppard’s back in rivers, and he sank down into the nearest chair as soon as he could, because goddamn, but that hurt. Immediately, maybe sensing his weakness—though, damn it, that wasn’t fair to Woolsey, not that Sheppard was really in the mood to be fair at the moment—Woolsey said, “You shouldn’t be here. I can’t believe Doctor Keller cleared you for—”

“I’m just sitting. I don’t even have my gun out.” Yet. “Banks, what do we have?”

Amelia glanced at him, then looked back at the monitors, saying, “Currently, the two hive ships are just sitting in orbit, sir. Neither has powered weapons.”

“Any communication?”

She shook her head. “No, sir.”

Fantastic. If it was Todd, he probably would have, at the very least, radioed to tell them not to shoot. And he probably would have established orbit over Atlantis, not the mainland. “Darts?”

“No, sir.”

“Life signs?” Maybe they were just…empty ships. He didn’t know if that was possible, but it could be.

“Yes, sir.”

And there went that idea. “Okay. Open a channel.” He glanced at Woolsey, who was just watching. “Unless you have something you’d rather do.”

Woolsey shook his head. “I’m just surprised you didn’t decide to shoot first.”

Maybe he was getting soft in his old age. “It’s for just in case it’s Todd and he forgot to call.”

“Fair enough.” Woolsey looked at Amelia. “Sargent Banks? Open a channel, please.”

She nodded, then opened a channel, and Sheppard gestured for Woolsey to go ahead. He would talk, but he wasn’t sure he could keep the pain out of his voice, and that was not something you wanted to show to a Wraith.

“Wraith vessel, this is Richard Woolsey, Head of the Atlantis—”

“Prepare to be destroyed.”

Fantastic. Apparently talking was out. Sheppard turned to Amelia as she said, “They’re powering weapons.”

“Raise the shields.” He pressed his earpiece. “McKay, we need that ZPM. Now.”

Rodney’s voice came back frustrated, which was not a good sign. “I’m trying to rewrite the base code to get it to work. Do you know how hard it is to write machine code in base six?”

He had no idea. “McKay, they’re going to be firing on us—” The first beam hit the shield, shaking the city, and Sheppard grabbed onto the edge of the control panel next to him to keep from falling out of the chair. “We need it now.”

There was a pause, so long that Sheppard was worried something had happened to Rodney, and then, in a strange voice, he said, “Sheppard, I need you down here.”

Not what he was expecting. “I can barely walk.”

“Yeah, well, Ancient tech likes you best. Get Ronon to carry you, I don’t care, but you need to get down here, and then we’ll get you to the chair.”

Sheppard was out of his chair before Rodney was done talking, jamming his crutches under his arms to start towards the transporter. It hurt like a son of a bitch, but he didn’t have much of a choice. Ronon followed after him, pressing the map in the transporter as soon as they were both inside. It spit them out in front of Rodney’s lab, and Sheppard walk-hopped in to find Rodney in front of his computer, typing furiously, the ZPM sitting on the table next to him.

“What is it?”

Rodney barely looked up at him, saying, “I need you to initialize it.”

“It’s a ZPM, McKay. They don’t need to be initialized.”

Rodney waved an exasperated hand. “This one does, and no, I don’t know why, and no, I don’t know why it won’t let me do it, but it should let you do it, because you have the gene naturally, so just _do_ it, then go to the control chair so you can start shooting the hive ships.”

Okay, then. Sheppard took a couple more hops forward, before reaching forward to grab the ZPM. He had initialized Ancient tech before—that had been supposed to be his job, before Sumner’s death—and it was fairly simple. Touch it, turn it on, think ‘let everyone be able to use this.’ Then, if nobody wanted to use it, turn it off. So he leaned over and put his hand on it and—

Everything went white. Silent. The absence of everything, of touch, of feeling, and it was silent, but there was screaming, silent, but there were voice, silent but when it got silent you were supposed to be able to hear your heartbeat, the blood moving through your veins, and that was why nobody could stay in that room that was silent, but he couldn’t hear that, he couldn’t hear any of it, he wasn’t even sure if he could hear his thoughts, and whoever said that white meant there was light had never seen this white, because it was white but there was no light, there was nothing, there was nothing, there was _nothing_ —

And then, there was.

“Sheppard. Sheppard.” A hand on his cheek, and he was lying flat on the ground, and his back hurt, and his leg _hurt_. “Come on, Sheppard, wake up. We need to get you into the chair. Get Lorne into the chair. I don’t know if Sheppard’s going to up for it.”

“Lorne is running the Control Room.”

A hand on his cheek, still on his cheek, was he losing time? “Kusanagi, then. I don’t care. We need to get the Colonel to the infirmary.”

“Did it work?” His leg hurt. He needed to know if it had worked. He couldn’t think. The pain felt good, because it was pain. He could _feel_.

The hand moved from his cheek. “Yes. It was initialized. Sheppard, you’re—shit, your ear’s bleeding. What does that mean, that your ear’s bleeding? Are you—is your brain bleeding?”

Sheppard heaved himself upright because his back hurt, though goddamn, that made his leg hurt, and he opened his eyes, and he could see his legs, and the ground, and Ronon, and Rodney, and there was shaking, sporadic, and the _Wraith_.

“I need to get to the control chair.”

Rodney looked up from his computer, which he had on the ground next to them. “You had a seizure. You need to get to the infirmary. You shouldn’t have left to begin with. Damn it, we can’t do anything if you get yourself killed.”

“We can’t do anything if the Wraith kill us.” He tried to get to his feet, nearly tipping over as both Rodney and Ronon lunged towards him to catch him. “Get me to the control chair. And get that ZPM working.”

The journey to the control chair was even worse than the walk to Rodney’s lab; his head felt like it was about to split open, and there was definitely blood coming out of both of his ears now; he could feel it running down his neck and into his collar. Dr. Keller was not going to be happy with him.

He dropped down into the control chair, and it reclined, lighting up before he managed to hand off the crutches to Ronon, who was standing next to him. And then he was in Atlantis.

Shield strength 17%, holding, slight damage to the East pier where the weapon had hit the water and boiled it, ZPM initialization, and then power, so much power, they never had a fully-charged ZPM, and this one was more than charged, this one was _too much data to think about_ because the Wraith were firing again, and he sent out the drones, he was the drones, thousands of them, but he was also Atlantis, every door, every computer, every lab, and it was so much information, but he was the drones, he needed to be the drones, and the Wraith ship sent out darts, and some of the drones hit the darts, bright points of pain in the part of the brain that had no spacial location, but he maneuvered around them, and it was like flying a puddle jumper, a thousand puddle jumpers, and they hit the hives, sliced through them, tore them to ribbons, and they were gone, and they had won.

He jerked upright in the chair, metal in his mouth, running down his throat, and he was coughing it up, but they had won.

“Get him on a gurney _now_.” Hands touched him, and he jerked away from them, his skin crawling, but they grabbed again, lifting him, moving him, laying him down, and all he could do was cough and gasp and _breathe_.


	3. 2

“Anyone want to tell me what happened back there?”

Rodney glanced up from his cup of jello to look at where Sheppard was lying in the infirmary bed. “We’re pretty sure it’s some sort of prototype super-ZPM that requires someone with the gene to initialize it, probably as a safety measure to keep the Wraith from using it.”

Huh. “Why did initializing it make me have a seizure?” Which was, of course, forcing him to stay even longer in the infirmary, which was the exact opposite of what he had been hoping. Though considering how bad his head felt, staying for at least a while longer was probably not a terrible idea.

“Probably because your brain is inferior.”

“ _McKay._ ”

Rodney shrugged, shoveling more jello into his mouth. Between chewing, he muttered, “It’s true. We know Ancient brains were more advanced. It may have been expecting that and tried to make your brain do too much at once.”

Sheppard considered taking the jello away from Rodney just to get him to pay attention, but getting between McKay and food was never a good idea. “Could it have killed me?”

McKay waved a dismissive hand. “Oh, probably not. I mean, most Ancient stuff seems to have some sort of automatic shut-off to prevent that kind of stuff. Though, I mean, being a prototype, this might not have, but…well, you were fine.”

“I feel so reassured.”

Another dismissive hand-wave, this time halfhearted as Rodney turned his attention to the tablet sitting on his lap. “We’re getting an incoming wormhole. It’s the SGC’s check-in.” He grinned. “We get to tell them about the ZPM.”

“Woolsey gets to tell them about the ZPM.”

McKay looked up from his tablet to eye the door. “If I hurry, I can get there before—”

“McKay.”

McKay sighed. “Yeah. I’ll just save it for my Nobel speech.”

The speech they both knew was never going to happen, not as long as Atlantis was classified, and that was probably going to be the case for long after even the Stargate was declassified. Whenever that might be. But it was fine for Rodney to pretend, especially if it kept him from complaining.

Sheppard shifted, trying to sit up better, then stopped when his head—and leg—told him that was a seriously bad idea. Having a grand mal seizure while dealing with a Wraith-blasted leg was apparently not the best thing for your health. The nausea that had flared up after he woke up was gone, as was the vertigo, but the shooting pain in his right temple and the back of his head was still holding strong, and so was the ache in in his leg.

Rodney, in a fit of uncharacteristic empathy, seemed to notice his discomfort, because he said, “You know, if you’d let them give you the good stuff, it wouldn’t hurt so much.”

But then he wouldn’t be able to think, and it wasn’t that he didn’t trust the people in Atlantis—he trusted them more than anyone else, human or not, he had met in his life—but that he didn’t trust…anyone. Not to take care of his city. And he needed to be able to think for that.

Not that he was going to tell that to Rodney, who would spent the next few years complaining about how Sheppard didn’t trust him. “I’m good.”

“Sure. That’s why you’ve been wincing every—”

“Colonel Sheppard, Stargate Command would like to speak with you.”

Fantastic. Anything to keep from having to listen to Rodney—Rodney, who though medicine wasn’t even science—extolling the virtues of heavy-duty painkillers. “Patch it through to my headset.” Because there was no way he was getting up to the control room.

A hiss in his earpiece, and then Samantha Carter’s voice was patched through. “Hi, John. I heard you got in a bit of a mess.”

“Yeah. Bit of a trouble with a Wraith…and a ZPM. How are things back on Earth, Sam?”

“It’s General Carter, now.”

He had forgotten. “Oh, yeah. Congratulations.”

“Thanks. Though that wasn’t why I wanted to talk to you.”

He hadn’t thought it was. “What’s do you need, General?” She was basically the only superior officer—other than, possibly, General O’Neill, that he actually respected, and he had no problem making sure she knew that.

“I wanted to warn you beforehand; there has been talk in the IOA of bringing Atlantis back to Earth.”

Sheppard thought his heart actually stopped for a second at that. “What?”

Rodney, who had been half-listening up until that point, jerked his head up, then pressed something on his tablet; when he spoke, Sheppard heard his voice doubled, clear through his open ear and slightly hissing through the earpiece. “What’s going on?”

Sheppard was pretty sure he could hear Sam sigh, and then she answered, “The Russians and the Chinese want to bring Atlantis back to Earth, and the IOA is considering it.”

Rodney scowled at Sheppard like the whole thing was his fault. “How can they do that? Atlantis belongs to Pegasus.”

“I’m not advocating for it, Rodney. I’m just giving you some warning. For right now, the SGC and Homework Security are arguing against it, but we’re having some issues right now, and the concern is reasonable.”

“What’s going on?” The Ori had been decimated, and as far as Sheppard knew—though he wasn’t really up to date on Earth security issues—they hadn’t encountered anything else to rival the threat.

“A group of System Lords—new System Lords, it seems like ones that were small fish until we got involved—seem to have gotten a hold of some Ori technology that ended up scattered around the galaxy, and they’ve been incorporating it into their own technology. It’s…bad.”

Sheppard had never fought the Goa’uld, not really, and he had only fought the Ori briefly, but from what he had heard that sounded like the worst possible combination. Creatures who were megalomaniacs who had access to technology that gave them the closest thing to god-like powers that existed without being Ascended. Not what he would want to be fighting against.

Rodney still looked furious. “So they’re going to pull Atlantis away from Pegasus to do…what, exactly? It’s not like we can shield the whole planet, not even if we had full ZPM power, unless they’re expecting us to just shield the United States and Russia and China—not that we can do that, but even if we could—”

It was amazing how much more this made his head hurt, and he wasn’t even doing anything but sitting there. Which was part of the reason he wasn’t going to get in the middle of this argument.

“Atlantis is the most effective weapon that we know of.” Carter sounded tired, almost as tired as she had sounded when she was in charge of Atlantis. The city had a way of wearing people down.

“And that’s why we need it to defend the Pegasus Galaxy against the Wraith. Who _eat_ people, in case you’ve forgotten.” He was gesticulating wildly at this point, though it had little effect given that the only person who was watching him was Sheppard, who happened to agree.

Carter finally sounded actively frustrated. “I _know_ that, Rodney. Like I said, we’re arguing against it. But the United States doesn’t have complete control over the program, and in case you don’t remember, Atlantis is an international expedition.”

“Yeah, well, as the Canadian, I say we should stay.”

Sheppard fought a smile, and lost when Carter said, in the irritated tone he knew could only be brought out by Rodney, “I’ll pass along your message. And I’m _on your side._ But I don’t now how much any of us are going to be able to do. It may come to nothing, but…just be prepared.”

Sheppard cut in before Rodney could get any more belligerent. “Thank you, General.”

“Colonel. We’ll try to give you updates as they come.”

“Thanks. And congratulations again.”

She cut the connection with a click in Sheppard’s ear. Next to him, Rodney ripped his earpiece out to glare at it like it was Carter or the IOA, then shoved it back into his ear. Sheppard started his countdown from ten to Rodney’s blowup.

He was down to three when Rodney opened his mouth. “This is absurd. Ridiculous.” Rodney gestured with the tablet, nearly missing Sheppard’s shoulder. “How can they pull us out of the Pegasus Galaxy? It was one thing when it was an immediate threat that only we could handle, but the Goa’uld—they’ve fought the Goa’uld before. The whole SGC was built on fighting the Goa’uld, and that was even before they got the Ancient chair, so it being destroyed shouldn’t matter. They have _ships._ We’re needed here, not there.”

“I agree with you.”

Rodney didn’t seem to hear. “Look, I know your highest loyalty is to Earth, and yeah, maybe it should be, but the Pegasus Galaxy needs us. And Teyla and Ronon, how could we leave them behind?”

“McKay—”

“And Atlantis. How can you even think about leaving Atlantis behind?”

Sheppard lurched forward to grab Rodney’s shoulder, trying to ignore the rush of pain the movement sent through his head. It surprised Rodney enough for him to shut his mouth for a second, which was all Sheppard needed. “Rodney. I agree with you.”

McKay blinked at him for a second, clearly not expecting him to say that. “Oh. Well, okay. You know. Then you can submit a protest, too. An official military protest, or whatever it is you guys do when you want to tell the people you’re working for that they’re idiots when you’re in some stupid structure where you’re not allowed to tell the people you’re working for that they’re idiots.”

“I’ll submit a formal protest.” Which meant more paperwork, but if it increased the chances of them getting to stay in Atlantis by even a tiny margin, it would be worth it. “Just…try not to antagonize the people actually on our side.”

“Yeah, whatever.” Rodney stabbed a spoon into the leftover inch of jello, and the two of them watched it wobble, overbalance the cup, and fall, clattering against the tray and sending little bits of jello everywhere. “I’m going to go work on the ZedPM. Just…sit there or something.”

Right, like Sheppard was going to be allowed to go anywhere. If Keller had her way, he was probably going to be in the infirmary for the rest of his life, or until they were dragged kicking and screaming back to Earth and he was forced to pilot the city because there was nobody else to do it, not really. Though, if he were to be fair, flying the city was one of the best experiences of his life, and he had to imagine it would be even better if they had enough power to get them where they were trying to go without just sort of failing in the middle of nowhere. But going back to Earth wasn’t something he wanted to even think about; there was nothing left for him there, not really. Dave was barely his family, even with their sort-of reconciliation years ago, and everyone and everything he really cared about was on Atlantis, in the Pegasus Galaxy.

Teyla walked in some time later, and as soon as he saw her he decided he would ask her to bring him his laptop so he could start drafting the official protest. She sat down in the chair next to his bed, smiling gently at him. “How are you feeling?”

Like his brain had tried to rattle its way out of his head through his eyes, but he wasn’t going to tell her that. “Fine.”

“Mr. Woolsey has informed me of the consideration of returning Atlantis once again to Earth.”

Oh, crap. “Yeah. Look, I’m going to fight that—we all are. Atlantis belongs here, in Pegasus.”

She tilted her head to the side slightly. “And you? Do you wish to return home? It has been a long fight, going against the Wraith, and I know it is not one you signed on to fight.”

“Yeah, well, neither did any of you. And it’s my fight now.” As should be, if nothing else, obvious from the mess that was his leg at the moment, throbbing with deceptive mildness only because of the mass of topical anesthetic on it at the moment. To say nothing about the fact that ninety percent of this mess was his fault to begin with. The other ten percent he could accredit to the Ancients, who had apparently decided that mixing bug with human was a fantastic idea. And she should know all of this, already. “I want to stay here, and there’s nothing that could change that.”

A smile lit up her face. “I am glad. I must confess, sometimes I find it necessary to hear that you are staying here out of more than a sense of responsibility.”

“Even my sense of responsibility wouldn’t get me to keep fighting cannibals for this long.” Though he wasn’t sure if the Wraith technically counted as cannibals, considering that they didn’t actually eat human flesh, and they weren’t totally human themselves.

“I think your sense of responsibility would convince you to do much.” Teyla stood. “I will leave you to rest, John.”

She was almost out the door when he remembered what he was going to ask her. “Hey, Teyla.”

Teyla turned to look at him. “Yes?”

“Could you get me my laptop? I have a letter to write.”

There was a second when he couldn’t read what was on her face, which was pretty much par for the course, and then her face softened and she said, “Of course. I will bring that to you soon.” And then she walked away.

He wasn’t sure who she thought he was writing a letter to, because it wasn’t as though he was going to have a sweetheart back on Earth who he needed to tell he was never going to see them again, given that, well, he had no plans to go back to Earth for anything longer than a mission debriefing until…well, he didn’t want to think about the until, because he didn’t want to think about leaving the Pegasus Galaxy. Ever.

His head had begun actually pounding at some point during General Carter’s announcement, and asking Dr. Keller for some painkillers was seeming increasingly appealing, but he didn’t like the muzzy feeling any painkiller strong enough to actually help gave him, so waiting for the pain to go away was probably a better plan.

Even if it made him felt like he was somewhere between having his head clamped in a vice and and digging a stake somewhere into the middle of his brain.

Somewhere along the line, Rodney wandered back into the infirmary, scowling at Sheppard from his seat. “The ZedPM doesn’t want to work without you.”

His head hurt bad enough that he wasn’t willing to try to figure out what Rodney meant on his own. “What are you talking about?”

Rodney jabbed at the tablet, glaring at Sheppard like whatever was going wrong was his fault. “The ZedPM will work—it’ll turn on, it’ll power things—but it’s not giving us the readings that we’re looking for.”

“What’s the power level on it?”

“High.” Rodney threw up his hands. “I don’t know. We finally got it to give us any sort of readings, period, which took basically writing an entire macro in base six, which basically the worst way to do programming, ever. Because apparently the Ancients needed six different directions to tell their computers to do things. Which makes no sense.”

This was not helping with his headache. “Rodney. The ZPM.”

Rodney nodded. “Right. I tried getting it to work, Lorne tried, Kusanagi tried, but we think it tied itself to your DNA when you initiated it, so you’re going to need to fix that.”

“That’s not going to happen right now.” Not when it was taking all of his concentration to just hold this conversation with Rodney.

“What are you—” Rodney grimaced at him. “You’re refusing the good stuff, aren’t you?”

“She hasn’t offered the good stuff.” Which was true.

“Because you haven’t asked, have you? Look, we need you to get this stuff working.”

“I’d rather not blow the ZPM up if I’m too drugged”—or in too much pain—“to get it to work right.”

“You’re not going to—” Rodney broke off, looking down at his tablet, and for a second, Sheppard thought that something was wrong, because Rodney basically never stopped talking, but then he said, “Yeah, that’s probably a good point.”

“Rodney McKay, admitting that someone else has a good point? What’s the world coming to?”

Rodney shot him a disdainful look. “I haven’t slept in almost fifty hours, and Dr. Keller doesn’t want to give me any more stimulants, so maybe I’m not quite myself.”

“You can probably still call her Jennifer, you know.” Words he hadn’t thought he would say, but thinking clearly was not working so perfectly at the moment.

Rodney rolled his eyes, looking absolutely exhausted. “Yeah, well, it’s weird, and better for both of us if I call her Dr. Keller and she calls me Dr. McKay and we all pretend that I didn’t propose to her because that was possibly the worst idea I ever had.” He shoved a hand though his hair. “Okay, I’m going to go see if I can go steal some of your blood and smear it on the ZedPM to trick it into thinking I’m you.”

He started to stand, swaying slightly like he was about to fall over, then sat back down. Sheppard couldn’t take it anymore. “McKay.”

“Huh?” Rodney looked up at him. “What?”

“Get some sleep. It won’t do us any good if you blow up the ZPM, either.”

“But the Wraith could come back.”

“Staying awake won’t keep the Wraith away.” Sheppard knew. He had tried. “Get some sleep or I’m going to order Dr. Keller to knock you out.”

Rodney actually turned around to look at Keller like he was afraid she was going to do it behind his back. “I don’t think she’d do that.”

“I think if I told her you’d been up for fifty hours straight and was refusing to sleep, she would. You can’t do anything more right now, anyway.”

“Fine.” And then Rodney moved his tablet to the floor under the chair, closed his eyes, and by all appearances fell asleep. Which was ridiculous.

“Rodney.”

One eye opened by a slit. “If you want me to sleep, you’re going to need to shut up.”

“Go sleep in an actual bed.”

“They don’t like it when I sleep in the infirmary beds.”

Okay, Sheppard really didn’t have the mental capacity to deal with this at the moment. “You have a room, McKay. Use it.”

Rodney looked at him for another second with slitted eyes, then closed his eyes and went back to sleep, leaving Sheppard to watch him, because there was nothing else to do and his head hurt too badly for him to sleep himself.


	4. Report 2: The Goa'uld

> The Goa’uld were, for lack of better terminology, the Gods of Earth before Earth was advanced enough to create its own. Not donning but instead producing the mythology of civilizations such as Japan and Ancient Egypt, the Goa’uld ruled through the use of advanced technology that they scavenged from advanced civilizations that came and went before them. Their technological advantage came from a combination of thousands of years of development and and the use of both human and human-hybrid slaves. It is theorized that, had there not been a slave rebellion in approximately 3000 BCE that led to the Goa’uld Ra’s leaving Egypt, the Goa’uld would still be maintaining control of Earth today.

-Seth Keane, author of _The Goa’uld_

> From the inauguration of the Stargate Program, the biggest threat to Earth was the Goa’uld. They had the tactical and technological advantage; they had ships.

-Helen Orrel, author of _Stargate Command_ and _The Saviors of the Stars_

> In many ways, the Goa’uld were less of a threat to the United States and the world as a whole than those in charge of Homeworld Security would like us to believe. While they may have had the technological advantage in the beginning, they were plagued by vicious and bloody political infighting they occupied their time and resources far more than a planet with no real way to fight back. More than that, they were used to controlling people who had no way of fighting back; they were unprepared for even small military forces like SG-1. While it may be true that the Stargate (SG) teams were necessary in stopping minor attacks, the unrestricted military access and evident willingness to bend—or break—the rules was nothing more than a willful abuse of power on the side of those in positions of authority within the program as a whole.

-Amber Sorr, author of _The Lies of Stargate Command_

> To discuss Goa’uld political infighting as an advantage held by Earth over them is nothing short of laughable. According to released documents, Stargate Command was nearly shut down multiple times do to political infighting not only between nations but within the United States government itself. Beyond that, a valuable member of the Command, Teal’c, was almost lost due to an unspecified error with the gate due to the reluctance of the Russian government to cooperate. Instead of holding the Goa’uld’s inability to cooperate up as a standard of by which to measure their uselessness, perhaps it would be better to use it as a shining example of the necessity for international and intergovernmental cooperation on Earth.

-Karl Astrof, author of _Lessons from the Stars_

> The biggest threat to Earth was the Goa’uld, and every time one of them was defeated, there was a celebration. At the same time, every time one of them was defeated, the threat grew larger, because they consolidated their forces and each individual Goa’uld grew stronger. There is a reason Apophis never made it to Earth, while Anubis almost wiped it from the planet. The SGC thought it was making things better, but all it was doing was depriving the System Lords of another enemy.

-Sarah Hanley, author of _Where it All Went Wrong: Power and Death in Atlantis_ , and contributing writer for the New York Times


	5. 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a struggle. I wanted to get back to writing Atlantis POV, but this had to be written (and then I have to write the next chapter) before I could go back.

“So how did they take it?”

Sam curled up on her couch, wishing the phone to her ear was really Jack, because damn, but she really hated this long distance thing. And talking to Jack at what was two in the morning for him because he had a conference call with China in an hour. “About as well could be expected. Woolsey listened, Rodney bitched, and Sheppard didn’t say anything. They’re not going to take this lying down.”

“That’s not part of my plan, either.” Jack sighed. “The Chinese really want Atlantis on Earth. If they had had their way, it never would have left.”

“Is it the Chinese, then? I would have thought it would be the Russians, given the loss of the Korolev.” A sight she still dreamed out sometimes, on her bad days, when she woke up thinking for a second that everyone was dead and that she was going to die alone in the emptiness of space.

“Rumor has it they’re building a replacement for the Korolev, or have completed one already. They’re having to build it basically from scratch, other than the specs they have, but it’s been years.”

Something which was unfortunate but true. “Why the Chinese, then?”

She could practically hear Jack’s shrug before he said, “They have a lot more people to protect, if nothing else. But I don’t want to talk about Atlantis right now, or the IOA, or politicians in general.”

“We need to.”

“We can do it during our actual hours in the office. I want to talk to you.”

She did too, but she wanted to have that conversation in person, face to face. Not that that was necessarily going to happen any time soon. Her next leave long enough to go to DC was probably not going to be for months, at least. Maybe longer, depending on how out of hand this became. “I do too. We don’t get to see each other enough.”

“That we don’t. Though rumors have it you’re going to be called down to Washington soon.”

“Not that I don’t relish spending time with you, or doing my job, but is now really the best time for me to be pulled out of the SGC?”

“Hardly, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to stop the IOA from doing it.” He made that annoyed noise that she was used to, the one that meant he was restraining himself from saying something he thought women shouldn’t hear, not that she hadn’t heard all of them already, or said them. It was oddly old-fashioned about him, in a way that he was rarely ever old-fashioned. “I see those morons more than I see you.”

“You’re always welcome back to Colorado Springs. Take my job back for a while.”

He laughed. “Don’t think I haven’t thought about it. But then I would need to break someone new in, and it would be far too much paperwork.”

“Of course that’s your concern.” Though she knew what it really was. They both did. With the situation as it was, they needed a sympathetic ear in Washington, and he couldn’t risk leaving even for a couple of days for fear of the IOA making some idiotic decision in his absence.

He was still playing along, though, because that was what they did when they didn’t want to talk about what was going on. “You know how much I love paperwork.”

“Yes, I do.” Sam hesitated for a second. “Jack, I—” A ringing noise cut through the room, and she felt her tension ratchet up a few notches. “I have to go.”

His voice went stiff. “What’s wrong?”

“Duty calls. Sorry.” She hung up, picking up her work cellphone at the same time. “Carter.”

It was Chief Master Sergeant Harriman. “Sorry, General, but you’re needed back on Base.”

She stood, like that was somehow going to transition her from being Sam Carter to Brigadier General Carter. “What happened.”

“SG-7 engaged the Goa’uld. Two casualties.”

Shit. Motherfucker. All of those words that Jack thought she wasn’t supposed to be hearing. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She hung up and briefly considered throwing her phone at something. Out the window, maybe. Anything to keep from having to deal with this shit over and over, because goddamn it, but she was sick of this. She hated being in charge of a command that existed on losing people. She had no idea how Jack had done it, or General Landry, or General Hammond.

And then she pocketed her work phone and set her personal phone down on the table and headed out the door.

—

The two people standing in the briefing room looked shell-shocked. Dr. Elena Marks, archaeologist, PhD, blood still splattered in her hairline like she had wiped her face off without looking in the mirror; her skin was ashy, a bruise forming along her right cheekbone, and she looked about half a second from screaming. Lieutenant Erik Chambers, his back rigid-straight, a muscle twitching in his jaw; there was blood under his fingernails and buried in his cuticles. Sam had seen too many people look like this, like their world had crashed down around them and they were left standing out in the open, vulnerable, one big raw nerve, feeling like they would crawl out of their skin if they could.

All Sam wanted to do was send them both back to the infirmary to be sedated, but that wasn’t an option. She took a seat in the chair that still felt like Landry’s, she gestured towards the two of them. “Sit.” They sat, and now that Dr. Mark was backdropped against the back of the chair, Sam could see how badly she was shaking. “Report.”

Lieutenant Chambers swallowed once. “We were attacked by the System Lords. Two classes of Jaffa; I drew the symbols in my report. And there was an Ashrak.”

Dr. Marks flinched so violently her chair shoved a few inches away from the table. When Sam looked at her, she ducked her head. “Sorry, ma’am.”

“Do you have any idea what happened? It was supposed to be a standard recon mission.”

Lieutenant Chambers’s lips tightened. “We think we activated some sort of homing beacon. I’m sorry, ma’am. This never should have happened. I wasn’t—I wasn’t careful enough.”

Oh, hell. This kid—and he really was just a kid, twenty-five if he was a day—looked devastated. “You weren’t the CO, Lieutenant; this isn’t your fault. Do you have any other information that you think might be actionable?”

“They were working together.” Dr. Marks’s voice was high, a little thready. There was no way she wasn’t going to need some serious therapy after this; chances were she wasn’t going to be up for going through the Stargate for months, if not longer. “Goa’uld don’t wok together, different Jaffa don’t work together, but they—they were working together. Why would they do that?” Her voice broke, and she flinched out of her chair, hands over her mouth, and stumbled out of the room.

Lieutenant Chambers turned to look at her, his blood-spotted hand braced on the table like he wanted to chase after her, then looked at Sam, need in his eyes. She nodded to him. “Go.”

He snapped to his feet. “Thank you, ma’am.” And then he turned on his heel and hurried after the archaeologist, leaving Sam alone in the briefing room. She knew she should go to her office so she could pretend that she was being a proper General, but she wasn’t entirely sure her legs would hold her weight at the moment.

None of this was supposed to happen. Things were supposed to have gotten better after the defeat of the Ori; that wasn’t supposed to have made things worse. But that—they—had just everything worse, and now they were facing something they were unprepared to fight: Goa’uld using Ori ships.

Those two men lying in the morgue, they shouldn’t be there. Like the engineer Dr. Andrews from SG-17 shouldn’t be in the infirmary with a staff blast to the shoulder, and Lieutenant Cho from SG-19 shouldn’t be in a coma from the equivalent of one-and-a-half zat blasts because the Goa’uld were supposed to be gone. They had beaten the Goa’uld. She had beaten the Goa’uld.

Goddamn it. Clenching her jaw, she stood, shoving her chair in, and walked into her office so she could get herself together where nobody was going to walk in and interrupt her.

Not that there were that many people around the base at…midnight. Damn. She wished she was still curled up on her couch, talking to Jack, being Sam. Not being General Carter. But that wasn’t an option, especially not with what Marks and Chambers had just told her.

So she reached over and picked up her phone, calling Daniel’s office. Normally he wouldn’t still be on base at this time—or at least not still be in his office—but he had just gotten a new piece of technology from some Korean-esque society on P4R-772, and so there was no way he had gone home yet. And sure enough, he picked up after two rings. “Jackson.” He sounded slightly bewildered, like he had no idea where the phone had come from, but that was pretty standard when Daniel got caught up in research, so she wasn’t surprised.

“I would tell you to go home because it’s midnight, but I need you to come to my office.”

There were a few seconds of silence, and then he asked, “Wait, didn’t you go home already?”

“They called me back when SG-7 came back.”

“Wasn’t SG-7 scheduled to come back tomorrow? Today.” It sounded like he yawned. “Is it really midnight?”

To her surprise, that made her smile, when she felt like she shouldn’t be able to smile again. Not with everything that was going on. “It is. This would be an easier conversation to have if you would come to my office.”

“Office. Right. Be there in a second.”

It was more like twenty minutes, though given that his office wasn’t twenty minutes away unless you were on crutches and the elevators were all down, he had probably gotten distracted by his work again. In which case she was lucky it hadn’t been two hours. But regardless, it gave her time to finish pulling herself together enough that Daniel wouldn’t question it. At least not aloud.

He slumped down in the chair across from her desk, a cup of coffee in hand, and stared blearily at her. “Why were you called back?”

“SG-7 ran into the Goa’uld off-world.”

He shook his head. “Maybe I just haven’t had enough sleep, or coffee”—he toasted her with the mug, then took a sip—“but I don’t get why that’s cause for you to come back to the base so late.”

“For one thing, SG-7 lost two people—Captain Marsh and Lieutenant Abramson.”

Sympathy crossed his face, clashing awkwardly with the exhaustion on it. It looked like his muscles weren’t sure how to move, so they were doing the closest approximation to what he was telling them to do. She had been there, caught up in research or on a mission where they couldn’t sleep for fear of being killed. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. It’s worse, though. I just debriefed Marks and Chambers, and according to them, the Goa’uld are working with each other. Whoever these new System Lords are, they’re not acting like normal Goa’uld.”

Another drink of coffee. “You mean they were working together.”

“I mean, according to Lieutenant Chambers, two sets of Jaffa, from two different System Lords, were fighting side-by-side against the team.” A copy of the initial report was on her desk—the Lieutenant must have written it up while in the infirmary, because there was no other way it could have gotten there that quickly—and she opened it, handing Daniel the page from the top. On it were two sketches: a black half-circle with two lines running horizontally through it with the curve facing to the left; and what looked like two overlapping ovals, the upper one horizontal, the lower one vertical.

Daniel examined the sketches for a second, draining the last of his coffee as he went. “I’ve never seen either of these before, and I’m assuming neither have you. My guess is that the first one may correspond to…possibly Chang-e or one of the other Chinese lunar deities, because it looks like an early form of the kanji for moon.” He looked up at Sam. “I would have said Japanese, you know, Tsukiyomi, but they didn’t have kanji until well after the time the Goa’uld should have been gone from Earth, so that doesn’t make sense.”

That was all very interesting, but she wasn’t sure how it helped. “Daniel.”

He nodded. “Right. The second one, I have no idea—it’s generic enough to be entirely unhelpful as a distinguishing mark. My suggestion would be to contact the Tok’ra, see if they have any ideas.”

“Any thoughts on why they’re working together?”

“Because it’s in their best interest?” Daniel shook his head. “Maybe they decided that more than one was necessary to defeat us. Or maybe the two Goa’uld are lovers and decided this was a nice honeymoon; band together to take down the Tau’ri.”

Right. “Yeah. Thanks. And Daniel, get some sleep.”

“I wouldn’t want that…lovely cup of coffee I just drank to go to waste.” He looked at her now, really examining her, and she fought the urge to squirm under his scrutiny. He had always been like this; he spanned the range from completely oblivious to able to stare into your soul. “Besides, how much sleep are you going to be getting?”

None, probably, because her people were dead, and now that she was back on base, there was no way she was going home. But saying that would only validate Daniel’s excuse for not sleeping, and besides, it was something she didn’t like to admit out loud. She had gotten worse at sleeping since leaving for Atlantis, and being on the George Hammond hadn’t helped. Being in command, being constantly in the middle of what could turn into a war zone at any second, it wasn’t conducive to sleep. And she knew she needed it, knew all of the biological and psychological reasons why she needed to have her rest so she could make logical command decisions, but sometimes she was afraid if she closed her eyes someone was going to die who, if she had been awake, she would have been able to save.

What she said was, “Get some sleep.”

He nodded. “Right.” And they both knew that neither of them was going to sleep. Just like old times. Except Teal’c was on Dakara and Jack was in Washington and she was in charge and people were dying.

Though the last one, really, they were used to.


	6. Report 3: Foreign Governments

> From the beginning of the Stargate Program, before the first mission to Abydos, before then-Captain Samantha Carter was able to jerry-rig a dialing computer in what is considered one of the most impressive feats of engineering in the modern times, the Stargate was in control of the United States military. Following the establishment of Stargate Command and the re-opening of the Stargate after Anubis’s initial attack on Earth, there was a time when the Russian government was also running a Stargate program. However, two could not be run concurrently, and the Russians ceded to the Americans, allowing them to solely bear the astronomical cost of running such a program. After that, the United States lost its Stargate and was forced to rent the Russians to continue their program. Sometime later, the two countries revealed the existence of the Stargate to the British, French, and Chinese governments. Despite some future collaboration between the US, Russian, and Chinese governments, including the construction of the now-destroyed Korolev, as well as the Sun Tzu, X-304s given to the Russian and Chinese respectively, and the existence of the International Oversight Advisory (IOA), the governments were never happy with the strong level of control the United States maintained over the Stargate.

-Sarah Hanley, author of Where it All Went Wrong: Power and Death in Atlantis

> There has never been a doubt; the Stargate Program operated the way it did because the Russian government wanted it to be that way. Do to circumstances that have been made cloudy by the widespread censorship of documents released by the American military, the Russians made the choice to lease the Stargate to the Americans in exchange for some undisclosed level of technological sharing that included the X-304 the Korolev, a ship which has since been destroyed. They were given access to alien-based technology and were allowed to send troops through the Stargate without facing any of the costs or risks involved; if aliens decided to target Earth from space, it was be Colorado Springs that was first hit, not Obninsk.

-Helen Orrel, author of Stargate Command and The Saviors of the Stars

> The talks were a formality from the beginning. China and Russia had made their decision and the United States had made theirs, and we all sat down together because to do otherwise would have been disadvantageous on both sides. There is a theory in the field of international relations that part of what has kept the wold from falling into war is that five of the most powerful countries in the world—the five with permanent seats on the UN Security Council—are forced to sit down and talk to each other. If that is the case, it didn’t work this time.

-Joseph Andrews, PhD., former United States Special Representative to the IOA


	7. 4

Jack O’Neill was fifteen minutes away from leaving his office for the first time in seven hours when his phone rang. He considered not picking it up, but getting a phone call at eight at night on a Friday when you weren’t even supposed to be at work anymore was probably not the best sign.

“O’Neill.”

“Colonel Ellard of Deep Space Radar Tracking for you, sir.”

Yeah, definitely a bad sign. Jack settled back in his chair, fighting the urge to sigh. “Patch her through.”

“Yes, sir.”

And then Colonel Ellard’s voice came through. She was petite brunette woman who was about forty-have, from what he remembered, with a surprisingly deep voice for someone who looked like she could have played Cinderella when she was younger. “General, we have reports that two ships have left Earth’s geosynchronous orbit and have entered hyperspace.”

“Our ships?” As far as he was aware, there were no U.S. X-304 scheduled to leave in the next couple of weeks; the Daedalus was on a return trip from Atlantis, the Apollo was on another scouting mission, and the George Hammond and the Odyssey should still be sitting in orbit.

“No, sir. From the reports we have, the ships are the Sun Tzu and what appears to be a variation on the X-304.”

Fuck. “Do we know where they went?” Though he knew what the answer was going to be before he even asked it; they were working on hyperdrive tracking technology, but they were a long way away from having functional systems.

“No, sir.”

Fantastic. “Send me all of the information you have. I have some calls to make.”

“Yes, sir.”

He hung up, rubbing his face with his hands. This was not how he had wanted this weekend to go. Go home, call Sam, pretend that they weren’t thousands of miles and a couple of time zones apart, remind himself why they spent so much time trying to protect people who didn’t know what they were doing. Drink some beer. Make an omelet. With beer. Not get in a screaming match with the Chinese delegate to the IOA or, more likely, get in an irritated-talking match with the Chinese delegate to the IOA, because screaming at politicians was generally frowned upon. As was shooting them. Unfortunately.

The first call he had to make, though, was to Joseph Andrews, who was basically a black Daniel who didn’t shoot a gun. As far as Jack knew. Thought that would be a sight to see. But from everything Jack had seen, Andrews was competent, intelligent, spoke more languages than Jack could name, and, best of all, acted like a human being instead of a politician.

Andrews picked up on the second ring. “Andrews.”

“It’s Jack O’Neill.”

“General. What can I do for you?”

“We have a problem.”

A short laugh. “The Russians or the Chinese?”

And that was the thing—he was smart enough not to need much explaining to. Which was Jack’s favorite part, because he really hated explaining things to people. “Confirmed for the Chinese. I’m guessing the Russians are involved too. Can you get to a secure phone line?”

“Yes. Just give me—” There was a quiet sound, like a man speaking, and then Andrews muffled the phone and said, “Work. I have to go.”

“Am I interrupting something?”

“No, sorry. Just my…” Andrews hesitated for a second, which seemed uncharacteristic of him, at least from the few times Jack had interacted with him.

“Just your…?”

“Boyfriend.” Andrews sighed. “I suppose if I’ve decided I’m out, I’m out to everyone.”

“Including us bigoted military types?”

Andrews laughed. “I’ll get to a secure phone line. Can you give me fifteen minutes?”

Jack wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. “Yeah.”

“I’ll call you back, General.”

Jack hung up the phone and leaned back in his chair, shoving a hand through his hair.

An hour and a half later, the two of them were in a conference call with the Chinese and Russian delegates to the IOA, and Jack was about ready to pull his hair out.

“There is a reasonable expectation,” Andrews was saying for what felt like the tenth time, “that you inform us when you start sending the best defenses Earth has off-planet.”

The Chinese delegate made an irritated noise in his throat. “There’s no need for us to inform you of anything. Our military actions are our own, and none of your concern.”

“They are when they put the safety of the planet at risk.”

The Russian delegate spoke then. “As you and your military continue to do?”

“We also save it every time.” Though we was becoming more like they, as Jack sat behind a desk. He hated it, hated the inaction, hated the helplessness.

Andrews cut in. “What I think the General is trying to say is that, while the United States military has, at times, put the Earth at danger, it also has a strong track record of saving it, which is made possible largely due to their communication and cooperation.”

That was stretching things. A lot. But if it got the damn Russians and Chinese to talk, he wouldn’t argue. The Russian delegate, though, seemed less than convinced. “From what I have heard, Jack O’Neill is not one for cooperation.”

“I’m all for cooperation. We and cooperation are like that.” Though the meaning was lost slightly by the fact that nobody could see him.

It sounded like Andrews sighed. “If we may return to the topic, we need to know the itinerary of the Sun Tzu and…apologies, but I don’t know the name of the other ship.”

Jack had to admire that tactic. Get the Russians—or the Chinese if it was them—to admit to the ship themselves, instead of trying to pry it out of them.

“The Gagarin,” the Russian delegate answered. “Our Russian-designed ship, to replace our lost Korolev. And if you are so concerned about Earth’s security, then you should consent to bringing Atlantis back to Earth.”

“No can do.”

“From all reports, there is a fully-powered Zero Point Module on Atlantis, which is fully capable of getting Atlantis to Earth without losing its capability to defend the planet.”

“If you read the reports, then you also know that there are concerns that the ZPM is basically one big homing beacon for the Wraith. And we are not prepared to fight the Wraith, and doubly not prepared to fight the Wraith and the Goa’uld simultaneously.” So tell us where you damn ships are. Though Jack didn’t say that last part aloud.

“We wish to formally protest this.”

Of course they did. Jack didn’t trust himself to respond civilly, which was just as well, because Andrews stepped in at that point. “If you wish to do so, you can begin the formal complain proceedings immediately.”

“We will do so. Until then, we have no more to say to you,” The Chinese delegate told them. “Goodbye.” He hung up, and the Russian delegate followed suit, leaving Jack and Andrews alone on the line together.

There was a beat of silence, and then Andrews said, “Well, that went well.”

Jack smiled. “That’s usually my line. Does this mean I’m going to be stuck with more meetings and more politicians?”

Andrew laughed. “I’m a politician.”

“You’re a…good politician. Not a real politician.”

“I see.” He sighed. “When I was getting my PhD, I didn’t think I would be negotiating political treaties about outer space.”

“I think most of us didn’t expect to be doing what we were doing until it just…happened.” Jack considered that for a second. “Except Carter. She wanted to go into space her entire life.”

“You still call General Carter ‘Carter’.”

“That is her name.”

“I guess it is. Well, I’d better get back to the dinner I was supposed to eat…two hours ago.”

Jack winced. He knew that feeling, knew how much you missed with the people in your life when you were on call all the time. “Have fun.”

“Thank you, General.”

“Call me Jack. I have the feeling we’re going to be spending a lot of time talking to each other over the next couple of months.”

A short laugh. “I have a feeling you’re right. I’ll talk to you soon, Jack.”

“Not too soon.”

“Right.” And then Andrews hung up, and a second later Jack set down his own phone in its receiver. Right. This was not going to be a fun couple of months.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this chapter was such a mess. It'll get better once we get back to Atlantis.


	8. Report 4: John Sheppard

> When writing about the Atlantis Expedition, there is a tendency to dismiss Colonel John Sheppard as the standard military brute whose unusually strong ATA gene got him out of what was basically a glorified taxi-driver position in Antarctica and whose killing of his commanding officer landed him as the military leader of Atlantis. But this ignores the fact that Sheppard is a brilliant strategist who showed his willingness to sacrifice himself for his team and for at Atlantis. Sheppard didn’t need a brain behind his throne; he had a perfectly good one of his own.

-Aaron Ortiz, author of _The Power Behind the Throne_

> Academic are fond of painting Colonel John Sheppard as a romanticized martyr-king, sacrificing himself over and over for his friends and his outpost-nation only to be miraculously saved at the eleventh hour by unforeseeable forces. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. Sheppard knew at all times the game he was playing, the way to make the best opportunity of what was going on. How else would he have gotten away with killing his commanding officer and allowing Elizabeth Weir to be infected with Replicator nanites and then allowed to remain behind on the Replicator home world? He was no martyr; he was a tyrant.

-Afanasy Grachyov, author of _The Taking of Atlantis_

> Colonel John Sheppard began his time on the Atlantis Expedition assigned as a glorified light switch, his primary responsibility to use Lantean (for Alteran naming, see Chapter 12) technology in cases when those lacking the Ancient Technology Activation (ATA) gene would be unable to do so. According to unofficial records, this was the sole reason General Jack O’Neill of Homeworld Security was able to convince the Joint Chiefs to send the then-Major with three black marks already under his belt on the Expedition. Once he arrived, however, he distinguished himself as a strong military leader with a surprising ability to unite different peoples. This, most reports suggest, is the only reason Atlantis survived its time in the Pegasus Galaxy.

-Martin d’Ivoire, author of _Atlantis’s Watery Graves_

> Colonel John Sheppard wanted to fly. From all indications, that’s what he joined the military to do; that, and rebel against his father, late multi-millionaire and utilities mogul Patrick Sheppard. He flew black-ops mission for the United States Air Force that have not and likely never will be declassified, and then he was stationed to fly helicopters for McMurdo Air Force Base, reportedly as punishment for defying orders while stationed in Afghanistan. Through his life, his loyalties seemed to belong to two things: the US Air Force and flight, with the latter by all indication ranking higher to him than the former. In agreeing to go to Atlantis, he would have given up all hope of ever flying again, and instead he found himself in a city that he could pilot himself—and did. Is it any wonder that he chose Atlantis?

-Jeffery MacArthur, biographer, author of _John Sheppard_

 


	9. 5

Sheppard was about fifteen seconds from shooting Rodney—or the ZPM—and being done with the whole mess. Though doing so would mean more paperwork—and that Rodney wouldn’t be able to come on missions and fix stuff for them anymore.

“Concentrate, Colonel. Focus on moving the data from the ZedPM to the computer.”

He wasn’t sure what Rodney thought he was doing—trying to play solitaire with the ZPM, maybe—but he dutifully squeezed his eyelids shut a little bit more. Now that the ZPM wasn’t giving him a seizure, he could feel that it was…weird. Too bright, maybe, except brightness wasn’t exactly the way his brain was translating the input. Too much, like it was radiating, but also like it was more inside, not bursting to come out but burrowed in on itself like the continuous gravitational collapse of a star without it ever becoming a supernova. And he could feel the connection to the city, could feel the city’s connection to McKay’s computer, but he couldn’t make the data move from point A to point C no matter how hard he thought at it.

“Colonel—”

“I’m focusing, McKay.”

Rodney sounded characteristically worried. “I was actually going to suggest that you focus a little…less hard. It’s glowing.”

Sheppard didn’t open his eyes, not wanting to lose the connection that it had taken him almost two minutes to make. Connecting with Ancient tech never took that much work, and he knew it wasn’t just because he was exhausted; everything else was connecting just like always. It wasn’t even that this felt sluggish like dying tech usually did; it felt…resistant. “What’s glowing?”

“The ZedPM. It’s glowing.”

Huh. A part of Sheppard’s mind shifted to investigate that; the ZPM was in fact emitting some sort of light, more so than usual. There was no clear indication of why, of what sort of use that could be providing to the function of the ZPM. If the ZPM were sentient—though it wasn’t, not in the way that Atlantis was, as much as Atlantis was—Sheppard would think it didn’t know why it was glowing. He tried to dim the glow, shift it back to the normal slight emittance of light to indicate that it was on, but nothing he did seemed to change it. Maybe it was unintentional, then—a side effect of whatever made the ZPM different.

“Keep doing whatever it is you’re doing.” Rodney sounded excited. “I’m getting readings now.”

Well that was just great. “I don’t know what it is I am doing.”

“I don’t care.” Sheppard could practically see Rodney waving a hand, the other one furiously typing away. “Just keep doing it. And once we get all of these readings, you should try to get it to—”

Most of Sheppard’s brain was focused on trying to figure out what made this ZPM so special, so it took him a solid ten seconds to realize that the sound of Rodney’s voice had stopped. Sheppard considered opening his eyes to look around and see what was going on, but if Rodney was in actual danger, he would be saying something—a lot of somethings—so he settled for asking, “McKay?”

“Turn it off.” Now Sheppard’s eyes opened, and he stared at Rodney, who was looking in horror at his computer screen. “Turn it off now.”

“Why?”

Rodney looked up at him, and there was genuine fear in Rodney’s eyes. Fear that was there less and less, not because the danger was less but because Rodney was used to it. But now was not the time to think about that, because Rodney was talking again. “The ZPM, it’s sending out some kind of signal. I was right before, it’s basically one giant homing beacon when on.”

“Rodney—”

“A homing beacon for the Wraith. Turn it off. Now.”

Sheppard did, shutting down the ZPM with a thought and pulling it out of its slot for good measure. “Do we need to stick it somewhere shielded?”

Rodney shook his head, already looking back down at his laptop. “No, no, it’s not emitting…whatever it’s emitting, damn it why didn’t I see this before, when it’s off, though we should probably stick it somewhere else for good measure just so nobody plugs it in accidentally. Not that most people would be stupid enough to do that, but some of the new scientists they gave me like to touch things before they know what they do, and I don’t really trust them not to blow everything up or send a homing beacon to the Wraith because they think sticking the thing that was _left out for a reason_ back in it place is a good idea.”

Sheppard was pretty sure the new scientists weren’t that bad, but he was also not really planning on arguing, because getting the homing beacon away from the thing that turned it on was overall a good idea. “I’ll secure it. Figure out what’s going on.”

“Yes, yes.” Rodney waved a hand in his general direction. “On it. Distracting me. Go.”

Before they had started on Atlantis, Sheppard may have taken offense to that, but he had spent too much time with McKay for it to bother him. Gathering up his crutch—he was down to one, and would be glad as hell when he was done with them altogether—he cradled the ZPM in his other arm and headed out of the lab towards one of the more secure armories. There, he stuck it in what they were pretty sure were safes of some kind, mentally coding it to only open for himself, Lorne, Zelenka, Ronon, Teyla, or McKay. It had taken them almost six months to figure out how to code them to open for people without the gene, during which time McKay had teased Zalenka relentlessly for not having the gene therapy take.

Then he radioed Woolsey. “McKay thinks the ZPM is a homing beacon for the Wraith, so it’s unplugged and locked in the East Pier armory.”

“Thank you, Colonel. Please keep me posted.”

“Yeah.” Sheppard switched to the dedicated science channel. “McKay, what’s going on?”

“Is the ZedPM secure?”

“Yeah.” Sheppard left the armory and started back down the hallway. “You have any new information?”

Rodney’s voice came back through as the mix of irritated and distracted that Sheppard had only heard on Atlantis. “No, and you’re distracting me, so shut up.”

Okay, fair enough. There wasn’t a ton that Sheppard could do at the moment, his leg keeping him from running or sparring or doing anything even remotely interesting, so his choices boiled down to paperwork, solitaire, or light switch. Paperwork was miserable and Lorne had done most of it anyway and light switch with someone who wants Rodney or Zelenka was uncomfortable, so solitaire it was. Every time the Daedalus or one of the other ships checked in with them, they tried to get solitaire wiped from their computers, but Sheppard knew for a fact that no scientist worth their salt would let it be wiped. Which also meant that every computer on Atlantis had access to the game.

He was halfway through his eighth game—eighth time, the charm, hopefully—when Lorne walked into the office. “Woolsey wanted me to tell you we have a meeting in an hour.”

“Why didn’t he tell me himself?” Not that Sheppard minded, because he liked Lorne a hell of a lot more than he liked Woolsey, but it seemed odd.

Lorne half-smiled. “I think he’s afraid of you, sir.”

“Why?”

“You tend to be a bit…grumpy when you’re injured.”

That was actually a fair point, though Sheppard thought he had been remarkably friendly, considering. And his headache had even finally gone away. Mostly. “What’s the meeting about?”

“Mostly some reorganization, I think, sir. We haven’t been off-world in a while.”

“Makes sense.” Though he hated the idea of them going off-world without him. He always hated it, the empty useless feeling he got when he couldn’t help his team; it was like finding his teammates’ bodies in Afghanistan, like breaking all the rules and still failing because it was too late.

It was one of the things he had always liked most about Atlantis; he was needed. He was always needed—as the commander, as a soldier, as a light switch. Probably not something he should aspire to, but it was something, was better than being a taxi driver in Antarctica that was only there because they didn’t quite have enough on him to kick him out of the Air Force given his flying skills.

Finding out he had the ATA gene, it had saved his life. It had given him something to live for and, more, it had given them something to do with him. In Antarctica, he had been heading downhill, fast, and he couldn’t see the bottom. Tumbling, falling, wasting away to nothing, with only flying keeping him sane. And then he had almost gotten shot out of the sky by a torpedo that could think for itself, then sat in a chair and told to envision the solar system, and somehow in the middle of all of it they had decided they needed him. But what he found was something that filled the empty spot in the back of his head that he had never known existed until then.

Lorne was staring at him like he had said something that required an answer, so Sheppard nodded. “I’ll be there.”

Lorne’s eyes narrowed in a way that made Sheppard think that hadn’t answered the question Lorne had asked, but he just nodded. “Yes, sir. I’ll see you then.”

—

An hour later, Sheppard found himself with Teyla, Ronon, Lorne, and Woolsey in the conference room, waiting for Rodney to show up. Truth be told, Sheppard wasn’t sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing; with Rodney there, all the time would be taken up by his complaints.

Woolsey looked at his watch, then Sheppard. “Colonel, would you mind trying Dr. McKay?”

But on the other hand, they did kind of need Rodney there. He turned on his comm, saying, “McKay.”

“If the world isn’t ending, Colonel, I don’t want to hear it.”

Sheppard looked at Woolsey. “I’ll go down and get him in person.”

Woolsey smiled tightly. “Thank you, Colonel.”

Rodney shot Sheppard an angry look when he walked into the lab a couple of minutes later. “Is the world ending? I’m assuming not, because you would have just commed me. So you shouldn’t be here, either, because when you’re here, I can’t even just take out my comm and shut you up. So get out.”

Sheppard walked over to him. “We have a reorganization meeting because I’m out of commission for the time being, and Woolsey’s getting pissy that you’re not there.”

Rodney gestured towards the computer. “I have work to do, in case you haven’t noticed. Wraith homing beacon that we had plugged in for hours and all that.”

“Are the Wraith coming?”

“Not that we can tell, but—”

“Then come to the meeting, and you can bring your laptop.”

Rodney opened his mouth like he was going to argue, then closed it again. “Fine. Let’s go.”

Woolsey seemed less than pleased with Sheppard’s suggestion when Rodney walked into the conference room with an open laptop balanced on one hand, but he didn’t argue. Instead, he said, “Now that we’re all here, let’s get started.”

Rodney sat down at his normal spots, waving a vague hand as though to say, “Get on with it.”

Lorne waited until everyone was settled in their seats before saying, “We’ve been operating on reduced off-world travel with Colonel Sheppard incapacitated and me acting as the temporary military commander of the base.” There was an emphasis to the word temporary, like he was trying to remind Sheppard that he wanted out commander duty as soon as humanly possible. “Now that Colonel Sheppard is able to regain his command, I suggest we return to normal gate activity.”

Teyla nodded. “We are capable of making trading excursions without Colonel Sheppard.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

They all looked over at Rodney, who still had his head down, fingers flying over the keys. Finally, Sheppard prompted, “What are you talking about?”

Rodney looked up at him. “I have work to do. Figuring out this ZPM, getting it to work without sending out whatever signal it’s sending out, that should be my number one priority. And besides, you’re still limping, so it’s not like you’re gong to be out there.”

To Sheppard’s surprise, Lorne spoke then. “That could actually work, sir. Evans and Cho both have the flu, so we could combine my team with Ronon and Teyla and have a full team.”

Sheppard glanced at the two of them; Teyla seemed interested, and Ronon looked like he was asleep, so it was basically par for the course. “What do you think?”

Teyla nodded. “I think that would be a good idea.” She looked at Lorne. “I look forward to working with you.”

They all looked at Ronon, who after a second looked up and shrugged. “Yeah. Whatever.”

Which was basically as close to approval as they were going to get from him. Sheppard looked at Lorne, who looked like he was waiting for a response from him. “Sounds good.”

“No, no, no.” When they all looked over at Rodney, he lifted his head, eyes wide. “This is bad.”

Fantastic. “McKay, what’s going on?”

“You know that ZedPM that was acting like a homing beacon? Sending out some sort of signal or, actually, emitting some sort of signal, because sending out implies intention and I think that this is an unintentional byproduct. Well I’m not sure what the range is, but apparently it’s far, or maybe the Wraith sensors just happen to pick up this type exceedingly well.”

“McKay.”

“The Wraith are coming.”

Sheppard fought the urge to brain himself on the conference table, and it was a fight he won, but in the interim, Mr. Woolsey asked, “In what numbers?”

Rodney typed something on his computer. “Three hive ships, looks like they’re about four days out.”

“We just took out a hive ship with no problem. We can take these out, too.”

Rodney was shaking his head before Sheppard finished talking. “No, no, see, when we took out that hive ship, we were using the new ZedPM. But the second we plug it back in, we’re back to square one, sending out that signal for any Wraith close enough to pick it up. We’re not going to be able to do this indefinitely.”

“Is there any way to keep it from sending out the signal?”

He took only a second to look at Lorne before going back to his computer. “Maybe, but in four days? No way. I have no idea why it’s doing what it’s doing, and it’s not like Zelenka knows what’s going on.” He looked up at Woolsey. “I need to go.”

Woolsey nodded. “Of course. We can finish this meeting later.”

Rodney stood and hurried out of the room, typing as he went, and Sheppard and Lorne followed, Teyla and Ronon taking up the lead. Rodney stopped in the control room, setting his laptop down and typing on it while looking at another screen. With one hand, he activated his comm. “Zelenka, get to the control room, now.” He gestured at Amelia, who was sitting at the gate controls. “Get me long-range tracking on screen now. I want real-time locations of the Wraith ships.” She nodded, typing something on her computer, and the long-range tracking appeared on the large screen to Rodney’s right. “Someone get me—” He set his computer down on one of the counters next to him, typing something on it. “Okay. I need…no, I can do it from here.”

“McKay. English.”

Rodney looked up at him, blinking like he had forgotten they were there. “Right. Someone get me Zelenka. And then everyone get out of my way. I have a city to save.”

Sheppard nodded to Lorne, who switched to the dedicated science frequency; while Lorne was talking, Sheppard turned back to Rodney. “Give me an estimate.”

Rodney didn’t even pick his head up from the computer that time. I already told you—four days.”

He wasn’t going to shoot Rodney. He wasn’t. They needed Rodney. And he _liked_ Rodney, lunatic that he was. But every time something like this happened, Sheppard wondered how someone hadn’t shoved him out a window years ago. Of course, some of that might have been his headache, which was back in full force and definitely not helping his mood. “Until you’ll have an answer for us, McKay.”

“Right. Give me half on hour.” Zelenka hurried into the room, face flushed, and Rodney turned to him. “Three hive ships. Four days. Find me a solution.” And the two of them got to work.


	10. Report 5: Samantha Carter

> Brigadier General Samantha Carter started work with the Stargate Program as a Captain assigned to the project tasked with making the Stargate operational. She, along with Dr. Daniel Jackson—a man she did not meet until after the initial trip to Abydos—were, against all odds, able to get the Stargate to connect with the Abydos Gate and, later, all other Gates in the Milky Way Galaxy. This, however, is not the most impressive of her successes; she, as a part of the Stargate Command flagship team SG-1, was able save the world more times than we can count—or know, given how many mission reports are still classified.
> 
> Briefly following then-Major General Jack O’Neill’s posting at Homeworld Security, she was assigned to head up research at Area 51. Rumor has it that she and the General began a sexual relationship during that time, though given that there had been rumors of her sexual relationship with her commanding officer since the beginning of her time on SG-1, it is difficult to tell whether there is any truth to it.
> 
> She returned to SG-1 after the discovery of the Ori, and remained on it until her brief stint as leader of Atlantis. Following that, she took control of the BC-304 the _George Hammond_. After that, following the retirement of Major General Hank Landry, she was given command of Stargate Command.

-Krishna Singh, author of _The Life of Samantha Carter_

> To say that General Samantha Carter wasn’t in a relationship with General Jack O’Neill by the time she was assigned to work in Area 51 is to ignore all reality. By all indications, the two of them were in a relationship in all but name—and penetration—for most of their time on SG-1. Their marriage immediately following General Carter’s appointment to Stargate Command is the clearest indication of this.

-Helen Orrel, author of _Stargate Command_ and _The Saviors of the Stars_

> Rumors have it that, immediately after General Samantha Carter’s appointment to her post at Stargate Command, General Jack O’Neill called the President personally and demanded permission to marry her. It was granted, and three days later they were married in a private ceremony in Colorado Springs. The celebration following it is said to have been the biggest since the defeat of the Ori.

-Devon Jameson, author of _SG-1 Through the Years_

> We were all in love with [General] Carter. She’s beautiful, brilliant, willing to sacrifice her life to save any of us. And there were times when anyone else would have, you know, given up, but she didn’t, she just kept working, just kept trying until she got it. And she always did. There was this one time, when I was on the Prometheus, and we all got beamed into this enemy spaceship—and I can’t given you any more details than that, that’s all that’s been released—but anyway, we’re all in this enemy spaceship, and we think, you know, that we’re going to die because there isn’t anything that we can do. And all of us are there thinking, sometimes saying, if Carter had been there, you know, General Carter, she would be able to get us out of it. But we don’t know where she is, we don’t know if she’s still on the ship, we don’t know if she’s been taken, we don’t know if she’s been killed. We don’t know what’s going on. And then, suddenly, we’re all back on the Prometheus, and it turns out she got left behind, and she stayed awake, you know, for days with this really bad concussion, trying to get us back, and she succeeded. Without any help, without anyone, with this concussion that probably should have killed her or at least incapacitated her, she figured out how to—how to save us. So yeah, we were in love with her. How could we not be?

-From interview with Retired Sargent Jeffery Allen

> To reduce Brigadier General Samantha Carter to “the woman who married General Jack O’Neill” or “the sweetheart of the SGC” is an insulting simplification of her role at Stargate Command. According to all reports, she was the brains behind the operation, the one who made the Stargate work, the one who exploded a sun, the one who kept the world from falling into the hands of the Goa’uld or the Ori more than any other human being alive. She is, by all indication, the most important person in the world.

Jason Clarke, author of _Saving the World_

> Samantha Carter is the woman who doomed the world, and it is only sheer dumb luck that her actions didn’t lead to its end. Her actions during the battle not only directly caused the Chasm but also almost ceded the Gate Room to hostile forces. People are willing to give her a pass because of her previous actions, or because of the fact that she is a woman, but in the end, what really matters is, Carter is the woman who doomed the world.

-From NYTimes op-ed piece by _Jose Caron_


	11. 6

Daniel wished he was negotiating with Goa’uld.

Goa’uld, he could shoot. Goa’uld, they could imprison. Members of the Chinese and Russian delegations, they had to listen to and nod and smile at, like the idea of pulling Atlantis back to Earth to somehow try to defend it against the new System Lords wasn’t completely insane. All it would do would, at best, be to deplete the ZPM to dangerously low levels and then lose them the city as they tried to use it to fight. At worst, they would lose the planet thinking that having a mostly dead, disintegrating city would protect them.

Maybe he could shoot them anyway, though he didn’t have his gun with him. Steal one of the guards’ guns, maybe.

Now he was sounding like Jack.

Near him, crowded near the coffee dispenser like it was the only thing keeping the room from falling apart—which, now that he thought about it, was probably not too far from the truth—stood the Chinese delegate and his assistant, muttering to each other in Chinese. “It’s offensive,” the delegate snapped. “Bad enough that our International Oversight Advisory delegate is a woman, but to be dictated to by this… _sānbā_.”

“You would thing she would know her place.” The assistant this time. “Let her betters speak.”

Daniel found himself clenching his jaw before he could stop himself, anger sweeping through him. Sam. They were talking about Sam. “If this meeting was about letting the betters have their say, General O’Neill and General Carter would be the only ones speaking.” Probably not the most politic thing to say, but it was better than giving in to his urge to punch them.

The two of them spun to look at him, looking like they would have been less surprised if the coffee dispenser had started speaking Chinese. He was an expert in languages long before he walked through the Stargate, but somehow people always forgot that he spoke ones from Earth. “You shouldn’t be listening to other’s conversations,” the delegate blustered, before stalking away to an empty corner, his assistant trailing behind him.

“It’s a good thing General O’Neill didn’t hear that.”

Daniel turned to look at the official U.S. delegate to the meeting, Dr. Andrews. He was a tall black man, broad shouldered but otherwise lean, going into his forties. PhD in international relations from Georgetown. Daniel had read all of his work, and he was brilliant. And, apparently, fluent in Chinese. “I would be more concerned about General Carter hearing it.”

Dr. Andrews nodded. “True. Though, calling her an airhead, that’s impressively inaccurate.”

“I don’t think they were going for accuracy.” He looked over to where Sam and Jack were standing in another corner, close but not too close, their backs to the wall so they could look at each other and see the entire room at the same time. He could tell all they wanted to do was get out of the room, and he couldn’t blame them; they spent too much time apart. They deserved a bit of happiness every once in a while. But they were both needed for this, to argue Atlantis’s case in Woolsey’s stead.

Woolsey had been a surprise. Daniel had expected Atlantis to crash and burn under Woolsey’s leadership or, worse, take all of the wrong risks and none of the right ones, but either Woolsey had better leadership than Daniel had known or he trusted Sheppard more then Daniel had expected. Either way, it was working.

Dr. Andrews glanced at his watch, then cleared his throat in a way that had to be practiced, because there was no other way he would be able to project throat clearing that well. The entire room looked at him. “Let’s return to the discussions now.”

They all filed back to their seats, Daniel between Dr. Andrews and Sam in the American contingent. Jack was on the other side of Sam, his General face on again; he had gone remarkably good at it, given how little he wanted to be General when he was first appointed. They were next to the Canadians on one side and the British on the other, with the French beside the Canadians, the Chinese next to them, and the Russians between them and the British. As it was, Daniel had a pretty clear line of sight to the Chinese delegate, who was staring with something between disgust and lust in his eyes at Sam. And then he met Daniel’s eye and looked away, occupying himself with straightening his papers. Good.

Dr. Andrews gestured to Daniel. “Dr. Jackson, if you wouldn’t mind covering the information you have about the new Goa’uld.”

It was why he was there after all, why he had been pulled from his research on the culture on P4R-772. He stood and walked over to the screen behind their part of the circle, clicking to the first slide with the remote. On it were the two symbols Lieutenant Chambers had drawn. “Three days ago, SG-7 returned early from what should have been a standard reconnaissance mission, except they had been attacked by two sets of Jaffa working in tandem with each other. They lost two members of their team. What you see here are the marks on the Jaffa who attacked them. According to the Tok’ra, these Jaffa belong to Chang’e and Tlazolteotl, Goa’uld who are the basis of members of the Chinese and Aztec pantheon mythology respectively. What is rare about this is not that they belong to different pantheon but that they are clearly actively and openly collaborating. Collaboration between powerful Goa’uld tends not to come in this form, but instead, if at all, in the form of banding together to take out another System Lord, usually in battles in ships. Additionally, based on information both from the Tok’ra and from our own observations, these Goa’uld, as well as possibly others, have been scavenging Ori vessels and other Ori technology to use or to integrate systems into their own. We had known this previously but, until SG-7s mission, were unaware of what Goa’uld were involved in this.

“With most of the major System Lords defeated, it stands to reason that previously low-ranking Goa’uld are filling the power vacuum we helped facilitate. While this new trend of close cooperation between Goa’uld is troubling, going off of historical trends I would postulate that it won’t continue once these new System Lords establish their power and begin trying to take territory for themselves.” He nodded to the delegates. “Thank you.”

Clicking off the projector, he took his seat, looking at Dr. Andrews, who said, “Thank you, Dr. Jackson.”

The Chinese delegate shot Daniel a baleful glare. “All he proved was that we need Atlantis on Earth more than ever.”

The Russian delegate jumped in then. “Exactly. If these new Goa’uld are so much more dangerous, we should have Atlantis here to protect us. Not out in another galaxy fighting aliens who are no threat to Earth without Atlantis there.”

Dr. Andrew’s fingers tapped on the table slowly—thumb, index, middle, ring, pinkie—and then he turned his attention to Sam. “General Carter, your report?”

She nodded, then stood, and they all looked at her. It was amazing, sometimes, seeing how Jack watched her, like she was the only thing that mattered in the world. Watching the two of them off-world, there were times when Daniel had thought Jack would be willing to sacrifice everything for Carter, and if he felt anything like how Daniel had felt about Sha’re, he couldn’t blame him.

Daniel had turned himself into a soldier, one of the few things he had actively disliked, for Sha’re, after knowing her for about a year. Jack had known Sam for over a decade, had literally saved the world with her. That meant so much more.

Sam nodded to Dr. Andrews. “Thank you, Dr. Andrews.” She looked at the group of delegates. “Dr. Jackson is correct in his report about the new System Lords. However, we believe the Atlantis would be neither helpful nor necessary in helping fight them. Not only were the Ancients incapable of defeating the Ori when they were fighting them initially, bringing the city to Earth would also result in significant ZPM depletion and risk serious damage to the ship, which would have to be repaired before it could be used for the defense of Earth. While they do have a fully powered ZPM, it is—for the foreseeable future—acting as homing beacon that draws in Wraith ships whenever activated, which means that it could not actually be used to defend Earth.

“Additionally, we believe that Atlantis is of more strategic use remaining in the Pegasus Galaxy, where not only is there a better chance of its members finding a ZPM or a weapon, but where there is a greater chance of finding allies who would be able to help fight the Goa’uld.”

The Chinese delegate scowled at her. “You just want your military to maintain control of Atlantis.”

Sam looked annoyed as only she could. “Atlantis is made up of an international contingent.”

He scoffed. “The scientists are international. But all of the military, it is American. Your Marines, your Air Force base commander. We have no say in the military of your base, have no way to ensure you are not hiding technology from us for your own gain.”

Was that really what this was about? They wanted Atlantis on Earth so they could scour it for weapons they thought the SGC was hiding from them?

“As per the agreement signed by all parties represented here”—and Sam sounded truly out of patience now—“all technology gained from Atlantis is to be used for the protection of Earth. Not for private use by any government or military. We have honored that agreement.”

And, as far as Daniel knew, they had. Not that the delegate seemed to believe her. “We have no guarantees of that.” And then he said under his breath something that sounded an awful lot like, “ _Èr nǎi_.” Which was…wow. Apparently he was determined to insult Sam as publicly as possible, which, considering the company, was about a stupid as he could get.

The only thing that could possibly make it worse for him would be if Teal’c or Mitchell were around; they were likely to start a fistfight with the delegate or, more likely, just shoot him. Jack, who may or may not know Chinese—Daniel had never managed to figure that out—smiled at the delegate in the way that meant he was absolutely furious. “Why don’t we take a break.”

“So you can figure out more ways to keep Ancient technology from us?”

Jack’s smile grew. “Because if you keep insulting Carter, she’s probably going to shoot you.”

Carter looked vaguely amused. “I don’t have my gun with me, sir.”

Jack nodded. “Right. All those damn security protocols.” He looked back at the Chinese delegate, who looked like he was considering screaming or running away. “I guess you’re in luck. She would just have to kick your ass the old fashioned way.”

“Probably bad for international relations, sir.”

“Damn.” Jack looked at Dr. Andrews. “Time for a break?”

It looked like Dr. Andrews was fighting a smile. “Probably a good idea.”

“Great.” Jack stood. “Let’s go see if there’s cake.”

—

“That was a bad idea.”

Jack glanced up from his cake to look at Sam, who was pushing a mug of coffee back and forth across the table. “Sorry if I didn’t want to listen to Mr. Xú call you a concubine some more.”

One of her eyebrows went up. “Was that what he said?”

Jack fought the urge to grimace. “Yeah. Though I think, when Daniel was talking to him before, he said something else.”

“Why?” She took a drink of coffee, grimaced, and set it down.

“His expression. I’m surprised you didn’t see it.”

Sam smiled at him, ducking her head a little bit like she was trying to hide it. “I wasn’t looking at him.”

Something that still astounded Jack sometimes. He was an old, run-down soldier, and she was bright and beautiful and amazing. She never should have given him the time of day. “Yeah, well, I can’t blame you for that.” She took another grimacing sip of coffee. “Something wrong with the coffee?”

Another smile. “You probably wouldn’t believe this, but I’ve gotten used to military coffee. This tastes too…”

“Good?”

“Yeah.” Daniel dropped down in the chair next to her, scowling, and she looked over at him. “What’s up with you?”

“I guess I’ve just forgotten that in the real world people don’t remember that you matter more than them.”

Her face turned a dull pink that went incredibly well with her skin. “That’s hardly true.”

“You saved the world, and he called you an airhead.” Daniel peered at her coffee. “Is that any good?”

“I thought he called me a concubine.”

Daniel looked at Jack, then back at Sam. “Yeah, the airhead comment was the first time. Coffee. Any good?”

“Carter thinks it’s too good.”

Sam rolled her eyes at him, then turned pointedly back towards Daniel. “I just said that I had gotten used to military coffee. It’s fine.”

“Great.” Daniel stood, then stopped to look at them. “Dr. Andrews asked me to tell you that we’re taking a recess until tomorrow. Something about trying to convince the Chinese delegation that we’re not going to shoot them.”

“Does that mean we can leave?”

Daniel’s lips twisted into a smile. “Yeah.”

“Great.” Jack stood, picking up the half-full plate. “Done with my cake. What about you, Carter?”

She looked down at the mug, then smiled. “The coffee’s not all that great, anyway.”

—

“I’ve decided something.”

Sam tilted her head up from its position on his chest to look up at him, brushing her hair across his skin as she did. He liked her hair long like this, though it was still an adjustment from the short hair from his time on SG-1. “Now is your time for deciding things?”

He tangled his fingers in her hair. “I was thinking, maybe the conference isn’t such a bad thing, after all.”

Her skeptical look was probably well deserved. “You’re going to try to convince me that you’re actually _enjoying_ talking to politicians?”

“No.” She could never possibly be stupid enough to fall for that. “But this is the first time you’ve been in my bed in almost three months.”

“I think technically it’s our bed.”

He grinned, then rolled her so she was under him, staring up at him with her bright blue eyes. “I think you shouldn’t still be able to think technically.”

“Maybe you should fix that.”

And he did.


	12. Report 6: Rodney McKay

> Dr. McKay was, without a doubt, the most important person on Atlantis. People tend to think of Colonel John Sheppard as filling that role, or the commander of the base—though most would agree that, even if that had at one point been the case, it was not so following the death of Dr. Elizabeth Weir—but in truth, all those on Atlantis seem to agree that, unlikeable as Dr. McKay was, he was necessary to the base. Originally second only to General Samantha Carter, Dr. McKay quickly became Earth’s foremost expert on Ancient technology, and his ability to read both Ancient and Wraith made him close to invaluable. More than that, however, was the fact that he knew Atlantis better than anyone else—and everyone knew it. When there was a question about what to do, he was the one that everyone turned to for answers. The Expedition would not have known what to do without him.

-Chin Yeung, author of _Rodney McKay: Richelieu or Bormann_

> McKay was the person no one wanted to work with—or, worse, work under. He’s rude, he’s inconsiderate, you can have three PhDs and he’d spend his time telling you he’d rather work with a monkey. And we put up with it because it was our job and because, when he wasn’t blowing up solar systems, he got sh—the work done. But let me tell you something—there wasn’t a single person who worked with him who didn’t plot to kill him at least once.

-From interview with Dr. Andre Dumont, formerly of the Atlantis Expedition

> Dr. Rodney McKay is invaluable to the Expedition. While he may spend his time complaining, he also has saved the entire Expedition on multiple occasions. His ability to work with Major John Sheppard—to temper his more suicidal tendencies on some instances and encourage his ideas on others. While his technical abilities are impressive, what makes Dr. McKay truly necessary is his ability to generate solutions with little time and under enormous pressure.

-From Elizabeth Weir’s performance review of Dr. Rodney McKay (2005)

> Dr. Rodney McKay was the wild card of Atlantis. A brilliant scientist and engineer, he made decisions based on a pursuit for knowledge and science over all else. While the decisions of Atlantis’s military leader, Colonel John Sheppard, were restricted by military protocol, McKay saw himself as purely civilian and acted as such. So when something happened that shouldn’t have, the blame could usually be attributed to McKay.

-Martin d’Ivoire, author of _Atlantis’s Watery Graves_

> For most of his life, people have been describing Dr. Meredith Rodney McKay as either a genius or a tyrant with nothing in between. But what this ignores is that, ultimately, McKay was human with human strengths and human failings.
> 
> He was approached by the CIA as a child and dragged into a world of intense competition and indirect violence, when as soon as he finished his second PhD at twenty-four, he was recruited to begin building weapons for the CIA and the American government. After leaving there, ostensibly because he decided he no longer wanted to build weapons, he spent a short period of time in the private sector, then joined the Stargate Program, the most secretive part of the American military. While there, he worked on a number of projects, many of which are still classified, before he was sent to Atlantis.
> 
> From reports by those who worked with him, McKay was arrogant, dismissive, and insulting, but he also earned the right to have that mentality, given the work he accomplished both on Earth and on Atlantis. At the same time, he was shown to have a deep-seated insecurity that led him to push too hard and go too far, sometimes to the risk of others.
> 
> Questions have been raised about why he acted as he did. Was he the traditional military scientist, working towards scientific excellence without caring for the morality of his actions? Was he the academic scientist, seeking knowledge and placing theory over action? Was his motivation the protection of those around him, or saving his own reputation? If the CIA had never found him, would he have found himself risking his life in another galaxy with no chance of ever going home?
> 
> This is not to say that he was a victim of his upbringing, but he was definitely a product of it.

-Melissa Carren, author of _The Humanity of Altantis_


	13. 7

“We would like to talk with you.”

Sheppard looked up from the floor to see Teyla and Ronon standing in the door, straightening from his place slouched against the wall of the control chair room. He was waiting for Rodney to tell him to sit down and start checking systems, though from the amount of time he had been, he had a feeling Rodney had gotten distracted and forgotten about him. “I’m not sure I have time to—”

Teyla took a step towards him. “John, please.”

Swallowing, he nodded. He had been waiting for this conversation, or what he assumed this conversation was going to be, since they had gotten the announcement from Carter. “Yeah.”

“We have been discussing this, and we have come to the agreement that the City of the Ancestors belongs in the Pegasus Galaxy. We understood taking it from its home when your planet was in immediate danger from our galaxy, and we had accepted going with the risk of never being able to return, but now that we have returned, the City should remain here.”

John looked from her to Ronon, who nodded. “What she said.”

John sighed. “I agree with you.” Teyla’s face lit up, and Ronon looked vaguely happy. “And I’m going to do everything I can to fight for us to be able to stay, but if they give me an order, there isn’t much that I can do about it. I’ll be required to return and bring the city with me.”

“Is there no way you can fight the order?”

He had done it before, had disobeyed direct orders to save people, and he had thought about it when it came to Atlantis, but there were so many other people at stake, so many other lives and jobs that he wasn’t sure he had the right to throw away like that for his selfish desire to stay. “If I do that, we all get in trouble, and then we have the city taken away from us. Full militarization, probably, and then they’ll just drag the city back Earth anyway.”

“Are you not the only one who can proficiently fly the city?”

“Unfortunately, I’m really not. If no one else, General O’Neill’s gene is about as strong as mine, and he used to be a test pilot. He’s probably not as good at flying it as I am, but he would be good enough.” Not that they would drag a General out to the Pegasus Galaxy for something like that. “And…they could find someone.” They always did. “I…if they do drag us back, you’ll be welcome on Earth—I’ll make sure of it.” He would pull whatever string he could find, would bribe and coerce and blackmail to get them entrance if they wanted it. “And I’ll get it so you can bring Torren and Kaanan, too, if you want.”

Teyla inclined her head towards him. “Thank you. Though I am not sure if we would return with you. Earth is not our home.”

“Atlantis is your home. But I—” The comm crackled in his ear. “McKay, what?”

“Chair. Now. I want readings. ZPM, drones, shields, everything.”

John turned his attention back to his friends. “I have to go—”

“Yeah.” Ronon nodded to him.

Teyla smiled. “Thank you, John. We will talk later.”

He nodded back to them, then walked over and sat down in the chair, which reclined for him, Atlantis pulling him in.

People talked about Atlantis as being sentient, and that was true, but it also wasn’t. She was self-aware only in relation to the people within her, functioning on a purely computational level otherwise. But when she found someone she liked, she wanted to make them happy, because she found happiness in the connection, even if she didn’t always understand what made people happy or how to reach that point.

It was the same with all Ancient tech, though usually to a lesser degree. It made them happy, <function complete> according to Atlantis which was really < _actas perfectio_ > which was really < _1-3-124-1-55-52-5-54-6-5-3-124-11-51_ > just like they connected with ATA gene holders because they felt familiar.

So when Sheppard sat in the chair, she gave him every piece of information he wanted simultaneously, along with every piece of information she thought he might want, along with access to every system she thought he might find useful. As well as increasing his brainpower usage so he could process all of it and slowing his heart rate so the shock didn’t give him a heart attack.

He passed the relevant data onto Rodney’s laptop, which felt like Rodney to Atlantis, like one of his appendages, his code tasting like Rodney, and now he had the taste of Rodney on his tongue, bright and loud and tasting oddly of citrus. But he had more work to do, so he pulled his concentration away from Rodney, letting the taste (taste? but he could not taste his mouth was closed it was only neurons he was only neurons) fade as he pulled back to the center (physical? mental) of Atlantis.

She wanted to know what he wanted, shoving data (security footage/water temperature/food stores/ _colonian_ / _contagia_ / _tempo_ ) into his brain until he thought _asked_ wondered about the new ZPM (glowing too much but didn’t know why, beacon was the glow the beacon he hadn’t thought about that, only liked him) and Atlantis crowed at the last one because she liked him too, which made citrus flare because Rodney(’s computer) didn’t like the influx of data. But she didn’t know about the ZPM, didn’t know why it glowed too much, and she liked it _didn’t like it_ because it felt warm but it felt alien _not like John_ Pilot _Ours_.

She fed him all of the data she had collected from the ZPM, and he passed it on to Rodney _citrus_ and she sent him happiness (pleasure centers of his brain, and she let his heartbeat rise, and then she pulled it back down because she didn’t know what his heart rate was supposed to be because Ancients had had inhumanly low heart rates) because she liked Rodney, too, just not as much, and she liked that he liked Rodney because their happiness fed off each other and into her. It felt like hands stroking his skin, like his mother’s voice, like Rodney’s smile, like Elizabeth’s eyes, like Ronon running in front of him and Teyla handing him a _banto_ and like walking through the Stargate for the first time.

“—the information we need, Colonel. You can disconnect now.”

John let out a breath then disconnected, his heart rate skyrocketing the instance Atlantis was no longer holding it down. He let himself take a second, two, then opened his eyes and let himself reorient to being only person with only one body and not an entire city’s worth of parts. He knew he should feel lost without the information he had known, but he had no memory of what he had lost, didn’t feel like it was slipping away but like it had never existed in the first place, and if he couldn’t taste Rodney on his tongue it was because his tongue had never tasted it to begin with.

Sheppard stood, then radioed Rodney. “If you’re done getting the information, you should get some sleep.”

Rodney scoffed at that. “Yeah, right. I have a ridiculous amount of work to do, and only—”

“Seventy-six hours. I know, McKay. But you can’t stay up that entire time, so you should sleep before you start making mistakes.”

“Zelenka and I made a nuclear bomb on three days of no sleep.”

“You finished a nuclear bomb on three days of no sleep, and believe me, I don’t the need reminder.” He had had nightmares about it for months, had woken up with Atlantis humming unhappily around him, searing that his skin was being melted from his muscle and bone.

There was a pause, and then, quietly, Rodney muttered, “Yeah.”

Sheppard didn’t like hearing that tone from Rodney, so subdued, so he snapped, “Sleep, McKay, or I’ll drag you out of your lab yourself. And if you make me do that, I’m going to be pissed.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever.” Rodney clicked off of the comms, and Sheppard resolved to go check in half an hour to see if Rodney was still in his lab. Ten-to-one odds he was.

—

Seventy-four hours and twenty-three minutes later, the Wraith arrived. They had adjusted their timeline based on new data, so they were prepared when the Wraith arrived. Or, at the very least, they were unsurprised.

Sheppard could see all of it from his place in the chair—the long range scanners a three-dimensional image behind his eyelids, the life-signs detector a map in front of him, both somehow overlaid but still distinct enough for him to process separately. He could _feel_ Rodney pacing like an itch in the back of his head where his skull met his neck, could smell Wolsey’s anxiety like wine right before it turned to vinegar, could taste Ronon’s impotent frustration like smoke from smoldering wood. He knew _counted_ was the drones (1503 they needed more _Atlantis knew how to get more but not enough power_ they had power but they couldn’t use it) and he sent them out towards the hive ships.

Darts hit his _her_ their shield, pain, no location but pain, bright, but he was still the drones, he was the city, but she was slowing, sluggish, dying, and the pain grew stronger, broke through, and his nose was bleeding _he had no nose he was a city_ and she would keep him alive as long as she was alive but she was dying, they were dying, she was getting more sluggish as he sat there, the drones flagging until they could barely break through the hives’ shells.

Sheppard broke the connection just enough to manage, “We need more power,” his heart rate shooting up as Atlantis lost hold of it.

“We don’t have any more power.” Rodney sounded — but Sheppard was too connected to Atlantis to process the emotion, just a line through his consciousness that didn’t matter because she was dying.

“Use the ZPM.” And then he sank back into Atlantis because she was tugging on him, and because every second he spent disconnected was a second that there was more pain, a second he couldn’t do anything to help, and he needed to help, she needed his help.

A second later (a second? was it a second, he couldn’t tell, he was in Atlantis and she didn’t know time the way he knew time, and he couldn’t separate enough to give her a concept of time the way he conceptualized time) energy flowed through her _him_ them and she became alive again, and the shield was there and the pain was less, and they started breaking through the hives again, and there was one ship down, it was exploding to pieces, it was shattering, and then there were noises but there was no noise in space and they were words, words he should know, words he should know, words he did know.

“Colonel. Colonel, you need to stop. We need to turn it off.”

His mouth couldn’t shape words, he was too deep in Atlantis, he couldn’t remember what words meant because she didn’t use words she was in senary, but then he _she_ they translated from his brains to senary to Ancient to English that she had gotten from his brain. “Why?”

“It’s overheating. The shield is holding. We’re going to pull it, and I want you to check in with us.”

“I need to keep firing on the ships.” The words came more readily this time, though he wanted to use others words (I am the drones _we are the drones_ there is so much pain).

“Negative, Colonel. Once we pull the ZPM, it’s going to drain too much power, and we need all the power we can get for the shield.”

The power dropped, and Sheppard disconnected entirely from Atlantis. The pain of the shield strikes dropped off, though he became aware suddenly of the fact that his nose was dripping blood down across his lips and into his open mouth. It tasted like metal.

—

Rodney was in a conference room full of scientists when Sheppard walked in, and he did a a double take. “What the hell happened to your face?”

Sheppard shook his head, wiping a hand across his face to try to get most of the blood, which had gone past wet to sticky. He wasn’t sure how long it had been bleeding; he wasn’t sure how long he had been in the chair. “Nosebleed. What’s going on?”

Rodney grimaced. “Whatever’s going on with the ZPM, it started overheating almost as soon as you started using it. We got one hive ship out, two left. The shield is holding for now, but it’s draining power fast.”

“Can we get a jumper up there?”

“Yeah, but we wouldn’t have anything to do with it other then ramp it into the hive ship and maybe dent it a little.” He turned to face the room. “Okay, people. Start giving me suggestions. And if you’re thinking of saying something stupid, leave.”

They all started saying things at once, but Rodney’s eyes fixed on a woman Sheppard only vaguely recognized, who was fumbling around with what looked like a whiteboard. “You. Talk.”

They all feel silent, and then the woman looked up at him, eyes wide. Then she started messing with the whiteboard again, writing something down with a marker she was holding. Rodney made an irritated noise in his throat, slammed his hand on the table and then, when she looked up, started moving his hands in what looked like ASL.

Her eyes lit up, but she shook her hand. It didn’t look like what Rodney was doing changed, but suddenly she was smiling, her hands flying back in the same way. Rodney nodded, signing back, and somehow he looked loud even when he wasn’t talking, all grand sweeping hand gestures and facial expressions.

Finally, while still signing, he said, “Right, right, macros, that could be it. Okay, everyone out except Zelenka, Kusanagi, and uh, uh…” He started snapping, then signed something at the woman, who nodded, looking surprised. “It’s macros.” When people didn’t start moving fast enough, he looked around, then shouted, “Everyone, _out_. You’re going to be in the way, and we have important, city-saving work to do. So get _out_.”

They all stood and started flooding out of the room, parting around Sheppard like he was a rock and they were water. Finally, it was just Sheppard in the room with Zelenka, Miko, Rodney, and the woman whose name he still didn’t know.

Rodney turned to look at Zelenka. “Okay. Uh…what’s-her-name thinks the issue is one of macros, or that at the very least it could be fixed by macros, so that’s what we’re going to do, because I think she’s right. You—” he signed something at the woman “—go start working on a ZedPM-level macro. You don’t have the ATA gene, right?” She shook her head. “Okay. Take Sheppard with you. He can make it roll over or whatever for you. Kusanagi, I want you writing an Atlantis-level macro. Anything that will keep the ZedPM from overheating long enough for us to take out the hive ships. Zelenka, I want you going through readings with me to see what the fuck we missed.” He spun to look at Sheppard. “Don’t bleed on the computers.”

Thanks for the concern, but the words stuck in his throat because there was pain from Atlantis and he was having trouble disconnecting the two levels of sensation he was feeling.

The woman shot Sheppard a pleading look, and he followed after her, fighting to keep from limping because Atlantis flushed medication out of his system when she established the connection. He dropped down in the chair next to where she had a laptop hooked up to the ZPM, setting a hand on the ZPM when she gestured towards it.

At her nod, he initialized it again—why wasn’t this staying active for them?—then, as she was typing, asked, “Was that American Sign Language?” She glanced over at him and shook her head; he checked the flag on her uniform. “Canadian Sign Language?” He wasn’t sure if that was a thing, but if she was Canadian and Rodney knew it, it would make sense.

She looked frustrated now, like she wasn’t sure how to answer; she was saved by Rodney, who looked over and snapped, “Stop distracting my scientist.”

“I was being polite.” He wasn’t sure why Rodney thought he was constantly flirting with every woman he held a conversation with, though apparently for Rodney anything remotely resembling politeness to someone of the opposite sex was flirting.

And sure enough, Rodney rolled his eyes at him. “I know what you were doing. And it’s Quebec Sign Language.”

He wanted to ask why Rodney knew Quebec Sign Language—or Sign Language at all—but now wasn’t the time. Not while they were under attack by the Wraith.

The woman wrote something down on her whiteboard, then pushed it over towards him. He spun it to face him, looking at it. It read, “Can you connect it to my laptop?”

Sheppard nodded, closing his eyes to strengthen the connection. Normally it wouldn’t be an issue, but the ZPM seemed so reluctant to connect with him that he needed all of the concentration he could muster. Which was less than usual, because his head was starting to pound from the dart strikes. The ZPM fought him for a second, then acquiesced, connecting to the laptop with a click in his head.

And then they got to work.


	14. Report 7: Atlantis

> When we first got there, you know, the first expedition, the first wave, and we had finally gotten past the point where the shields were about to fail and the ocean was about to crush us all, all of us, or at least most of us, had the same two thoughts. The city is absolutely beautiful. And, the city is trying to kill us. Just try to imagine—this city that the Ancients left behind, it’s basically…it’s perfectly preserved, except for the flooding, and it’s like it was a city full of Oppenheimers. We know that there must have been civilians living there, children; it couldn’t have all been scientists. But what we found, what was left behind, it was all science experiments and weaponry and things that will kill you if you turn them on or try to kill you if you turn them off. And their index—all of their records of what happened—it’s a mess. No organization, no list of things that you shouldn’t touch, so we were stumbling around blind in a city full of nukes just waiting to go off.

-From interview with Dr. Andre Dumont, formerly of the Atlantis Expedition

> Atlantis, out of every part of the casualty-heavy Stargate Command, had by far the highest number of casualties per capita in the United States Armed Forces. Beyond that, there are times when it had the highest absolute number of casualties per month, and the theory is that it would have had the highest number of casualties per year if it had more people to start with. This is not to speak ill of those who were stationed in the city, but instead to give an idea of their sacrifice and their bravery; civilians and servicemen and women volunteered to be sent to a place that tended to kill those who came to it.

-Martin d’Ivoire, author of _Atlantis’s Watery Graves_

> The first people who went to Atlantis—the first civilians who volunteered to go, and the first members of the military who were sent—they went knowing that it was probably a suicide mission, knowing that even if it wasn’t, they were never going to go home. It is hard to say whether the choice was dedication to science or simply suicidal tendencies, but whatever the reason, they went.

-Aaron Ortiz, author of _The Power Behind the Throne_

> It’s hard to say why people decided to go to Atlantis, because everyone’s reasons were different. Those of us who came—who went in the beginning, who went first, we were all passionate and dedicated and a little bit suicidal, because you have to be to decide to throw away your entire life to go somewhere in another galaxy knowing that you might never be able to come back, knowing that you could be killed as soon as you step through the gate. Because even though the MALP—what we send through the gate to make first contact—told us it was safe, we didn’t know if it was, not really. And the other thing was that we didn’t have ties back to Earth, not really, because it was a one way trip, or at least it was supposed to be.
> 
> The people who came later, it’s hard for me to speak to their motives because, well, I wasn’t one of them. I didn’t have to make the same choice they made. But I think in some ways it was easier for them, because they knew they could go home. On the other hand, they knew about the Wraith, knew in a much more concrete way the danger that was out there.
> 
> The harder thing, I think, though, was staying, because it wasn’t like Earth, wasn’t like working at Stargate Command where you could go home at night and know that you were safe, know that, despite everything, Earth was one of the safest places in the galaxy. Because Atlantis was…was hell. It was magic, it was brilliant, it was everything all of us had hoped for and more, but it was hell in a city that never slept. I don’t think you understand—I don’t think people in the United States understand, at least, or the Western world, the peaceful world—we went to sleep every night, or didn’t, knowing that at any moment we could do something, or something could just happen, and the city could kill us all in our sleep, or unleash a plague, or a monster, or set off a bomb, or someone could walk back through the gate with alien pollen that killed us all, or we could be attacked by the Replicators or the Wraith or the Genii or something else that decided it hated us or loved us or just wanted our city.
> 
> Even with all of that, though, I know why people stay. Because when you’re there, Atlantis is home.

-From interview with Dr. Christie Forel, formerly of the Atlantis Expedition


	15. 8

Lorne found himself torn—as was becoming increasingly frequent—between his CO and the head of the Expedition. Sheppard wanted him out with the team taking out darts as one of the best pilots they had, and Woolsey wanted him to stay behind and run things from the control room. Even though Teyla and Ronon were there and perfectly capable of running it. Because the IOA liked its protocol, and even though Woolsey was Atlantis, he was still very much IOA.

“They need me out there, sir.” Lorne kept his voice as steady as possible because, with the lack of explicit orders from the Colonel, Woolsey was de facto in charge at the moment.

Woolsey shook his head. “As Colonel Sheppard is currently unable to give orders, we need you to take that role.”

Lorne found himself gritting his teeth and forced himself to relax. “We’re not going to need anything if the Wraith break through the shields before Colonel Sheppard can work out a solution.”

Teyla stepped forward then. “The Major is correct. And Ronon and I are more than able to handle whatever situation might arise here.”

Woolsey looked between them, then sighed. “Very well, Major. Keep our city safe.”

It took Lorne four minutes to get to the jumper bay and start the jumper, and another twenty seconds to get it out of the bay and out into the open air. The airspace outside of the shield was a mess of darts and jumpers, and Lorne found himself almost immediately being attacked by a dart, which he took out with two drones and a little bit of luck.

Lorne took to his comms. “Atlantis Leader, this is Lorne. Where do you want me?”

Major Calvin, who was the head of the Atlantis Jumper Team when Sheppard couldn’t be out flying, responded a second later. “Patch our hole near the West Pier.”

“Will do. Lorne out.” He turned his ship to the west, heading to the area that was light of jumpers.

Two darts dived at him as he went, and he let them get close, then stopped abruptly, sending them flying past him so he could take the two of them out. They exploded closer to the shield than he wanted, and he could feel the slightest ping from the hit, but he couldn’t do anything about it, not now. There were more darts incoming, entire swarms, and there was no way they were going to keep all of them away long enough for the Colonel and Dr. McKay to get their work done.

“Atlantis Leader, do we have anyone trying to take the hive ships out?”

“Negative. We don’t have the weaponry at hand.”

Right. “We might be able take out the dart bay with a cloaked jumper.”

“The second it’s taken out, that cloak won’t be worth a damn. They’ll shoot you out of the sky.”

“It’s worth the risk.”

There was a half-second pause, and Lorne focused on keeping the dart away from its dive-bomb of the West Pier shield. “Monroe, go with Lorne and try to take out the Wraith dart bays. Stay cloaked, stay safe.”

Monroe replied immediately. “Yes, sir. Major, what’s the plan?”

“The dart bay doors are open to let the darts out. Position yourself as close to the doors of the hive ship in position two as you can, and on my mark we’ll send in drones to take out the dart bay. Send out as many as you can; it’s not about precision, it’s just about doing the most damage possible.”

“Understood.”

“Tell me when you’re in position.”

“Yes, sir.”

Lorne broke off towards the hive ship, cloaking his jumper as he went. They had dedicated zones in space because plotting out three-dimensional space was complicated, and using phrases like ‘the left ship’ made no sense. The ships were massive like Wraith hives all were, and every time it sent a shard of fear through Lorne’s heart, because it would be so easy to be swallowed up by one of those ships, for it to move just a little bit and hit his ship and shatter it to a million pieces. Because jumpers were resilient, but they weren’t indestructible.

But he couldn’t worry about that now, because he was dodging darts and taking his position next to the open dart bay. Darts were streaming by, and Lorne found himself holding his breath like he was a kid playing hide-and-seek. If you don’t breathe, the monsters won’t know you’re there. “Monroe, report.”

“Five seconds, sir.” A pause, and the he said, “In position.”

“In my mark…mark.” On the word, he sent out as many drones as he could, shoving them all into the dart bay as quickly as he could. It was imprecise at best, and it sent a lurch of pain through his head that he wouldn’t have thought possible before coming to Atlantis, but he could get almost two dozen in almost simultaneously, and they hit.

And then the darts attacked, swarming, and he broke away from the ship, heading back towards the city. It rose up towards him, the shield sparking, and he broke West towards the less crowded sector. The darts were gaining on him, and he swerved, shifting his cloak to a shield as they started firing.

It was a second late, though, or he thought it must have been, because the jumper started spinning, the controls pulling away from his mind in a rush of static. He thought _stop_ at it as hard as he could, the ocean rushing towards him far, too far, and he stared to slow, darts surrounding him.

And then he hit, his head rebounding off of the control panel, and everything went away.

—

“I got it.” Rodney shoved away from his desk, laptop cradled in his arms, to roll over to the desk where sign-language woman—Sheppard had still yet to learn her name—and Sheppard were working. “How close are you to being ready?” She took her hands off of her keyboard just long enough to sign something at him, then went back to typing. Rodney nodded, looking at Sheppard. “You need to get back to the chair. Be ready the second we plug in the ZedPM.”

“Once I’m in the chair, I’ll be able to feel when you plug it in.”

Rodney had already gone back to typing, but he half looked up at Sheppard’s words. “Don’t start doing anything until the ZPM is in. I mean it—we’re at low enough power as it is; we can’t have you pucking around with things we can’t afford to have on.”

Irritation spiked through Sheppard, along with pain, crashing through his head. “I know, McKay.”

Rodney waved a hand in his direction. “Right, right, very good, now _go_.”

The sprint to the control chair was getting harder every time, his leg protesting the strain he was putting on it, his head throbbing with every step. So it was a relief to drop into the chair, feeling it recline behind him so he was staring up at the ceiling.

The city was a mass of pain, sluggish from lack of power, and all he wanted to do was tear the hive ships apart, and she _he_ they wanted to tear the ships apart, but Sheppard pulled away, trying to keep his thoughts separate enough that Atlantis wouldn’t start doing it just because he wanted it.

It was something she had a habit of doing, and even now she was shoving information at him that she thought he wanted, Rodney _citrus_ computer and sign language woman _apple_ computer, and Lorne _she couldn’t find Lorne_ where was Lorne, but then there was power, so much power, and he sent out drones to take out the ships, smashing through them, battering their shells until they broke, Wraith facing explosive decompression or explosion and John _Atlantis_ they didn’t care because they were Wraith and if he was ever going excuse genocide it would be for the Wraith.

And then something hit the East pier _hard_ , breaking through where one of the shield generators had been damaged earlier and never repaired, and Atlantis _screamed_ and Sheppard tasted blood, so much blood, but he just pulled together the shield, patching the holes, sending more darts at the ships, taking them out, and he wanted to kill all of them, wanted them all dead, wanted anyone who might hurt Atlantis or its people dead because they were his _hers_ theirs, and it felt like the East pier was burning _he was burning_ but there was nothing he could do, nothing he could do _he was burning_ , and he just wanted it to end, just wanted it to end, just wanted it over, just wanted them dead so everyone could be safe and there was no way they were going back to Earth _Atlantis wouldn’t let them go back to Earth_ and the ships were falling apart and the Wraith were dying.

The darts were next, but they had to conserve drones, so he just strengthened the shield, forcing himself away from Atlantis _city_ connection enough to say, “All jumpers, return to the city.” Because he needed them safe, needed all of them safe, and he was Atlantis now as much as he was him, her pain pulling him in deeper and deeper.

A beat, and then he felt them slip back into the city, through the shield, his shield, but he couldn’t find Lorne _she couldn’t find Lorne_ they couldn’t find Lorne, and she might not have liked Lorne as much as she liked Sheppard, but she still liked him, he was strong, he was _familiar,_ he was Lorne _acrylic_ gate, and she _he_ they wanted to find him.

Rodney’s voice came into his ear. “Sheppard, they’re gone.” And the words translated to Ancient then to base six and were shoved into his head and then shoved in again as Ancient and again finally as English, and he struggled to find the words he needed to reply, struggled to shape his mouth into something that would make the sounds he wanted to say.

Finally, he managed, or at least he thought he did. “Where’s Lorne?”

“How should I know?” Rodney snapped, and there was something not good behind his voice. “We lost the East pier. I need you to get down here.”

Sheppard took to his feet, surging down the hallway towards the nearest transporter. “How bad is the damage?”

“Don’t know yet. It looks like it took a direct hit, and almost half of the pier is inaccessible. No casualty reports yet, and we’re trying to establish—Zelenka, what the hell are you—shit.” He went silent for a second, then snapped, “Get down here, Sheppard.”

He wasn’t sure taking a transporter directly to the East Pier would do, and he really didn’t want to be transported into a fire or, worse, a malfunctioning transporter, so he picked the closest transporter to the pier without being in it. Normally he would just run the distance—he wasn’t that far, all things considered—but he wasn’t sure he would actually make it, at least not in time to do anything useful. Damn, but this leg was starting to get on his nerves.

The transporter spit him out into a hallway filled with smoke and people, and he pulled a bandanna from his pocket to tie over his mouth. The first Marine he found looked at him with relief in his eyes. “Dr. McKay is two hallways down.”

“Casualty report.”

“Two dead, fourteen injured so far.” Something bad passed behind his eyes. “It hit the gym, sir.”

Fuck. On any given day, the gym was one of the more crowded non-lab places in the city, and even during an attack, people without the ATA gene who would be in the way otherwise tended to end up there. It was a good place to stay out of the way and keep yourself both busy and ready when you couldn’t help. And they were probably all his men, military. He hated losing his men.

“I’m going to go help with the search and rescue. And have Lorne get in contact with me.”

The Marine—he was new, he had to be, because Sheppard couldn’t for the life of him remember his name—nodded. “Yes, sir.”

Sheppard hurried past him, into an even more smoke-filled hallway, forcing his breathing to remain steady despite the fact that it felt like he was trying to breathe through a bag. Which wasn’t too far from reality.

He found Keller first, pulling a person on a gurney, but she didn’t have time for him and he didn’t particularly have time to talk to her. There was rubble that people were trying to move, but he skirted around them, heading down the next hallway to try to find McKay.

Sheppard almost didn’t realize it was him at first, leaning over what looked like a naquadah generator with Zelenka, the two of them muttering half-sentences that Sheppard couldn’t make out.

“What’s going on?”

Rodney didn’t even turn to look at him. “We’re all about to die, Colonel, that’s what’s going on, so I suggest you go start digging out your men.”

“Specificity, McKay. I mean it.”

Zelenka was the one who answered. “The generator was grazed by the beam, and it is soon to overload if we can’t shut it off.”

Okay, that counted as them being about to die. “Fix it, McKay.”

“What do you think I’m _trying_ to do, Colonel?”

This conversation was not going in a helpful direction, and Sheppard honestly wasn’t sure how much longer he would be able to stay upright, his headache was getting to be so bad, so he headed towards the nearest pile of rubble and got to work.

Sheppard lost himself in the work, in moving stones and helping people—Marines, they were his Marines, and they were bleeding—who could walk move to a safe distance so Keller’s people could figure out who needed treatment first. He could hear Rodney and Zelenka talking next to him, and he kept an ear out to pick up if either of them needed him to do something, but he couldn’t tell if what they were doing was going well or not. Though he guessed that they would tell him if something was going really wrong.

Keller approached him some time later, as he was wiping sweat from his face. He could tell that he was covered in soot, because the hand came away dark, but the bandanna had done its job keeping smoke out his airways.

She looked him over for a second, seemed to decide he wasn’t too injured, and said, “You wiped a bit of blood…” She gestured to his face, and he wiped at it with the back of his hand, which probably didn’t actually do that much good. “Any idea if it came form someone we haven’t treated yet?”

Sheppard looked down at his hands, which he remembered wiping against his bleeding nose—which he was getting used to way faster than than he probably should be—then back up at her. “Honestly, it’s probably from me.”

“From you?” Her hands fluttered slightly. “Where are you bleeding?”

“Nose. I’m fine.” He turned to look at Rodney and Zelenka, who were looking if possible even tenser than earlier. “McKay. How’s it—”

Rodney looked up at him, eyes wide, and for a second, he thought it was just his reaction to John interrupting him, but then he realized the look on his face wasn’t irritation but fear. “We need to get out of here. Now.” He glanced at Zelenka. “How far do you—”

“If we block all doors to the—”

Rodney waved a hand. “Yes, yes, as soon as we’re all—”

“Yes, but we must—”

“ _McKay_.”

Rodney’s eyes focused on him again. “Why are you still standing there? Move. We need everyone out of the pier. Now.”

Right. Sheppard might be a bit slow at the moment—slower than he should be—but that he understood. He pressed a finger to his comm. “Evacuate the East Pier immediately. I repeat, all personnel, evacuate the East Pier immediately. Minimum safe distance, one thousand yards.”

People started moving, Sheppard among them, and then a call came back through the comms. “We still have two people trapped under the rubble in the gym.”

Shit. Sheppard shot Rodney a look, and he seemed to understand what he was asking, because he shook his head. “They’re too close.”

There was no way Sheppard was leaving his people behind in that gym. “Clear out of there. I’ll get them out.”

Rodney shot him a frantic look. “You have three minutes, Colonel. That’s not enough time to get to the minimum safe distance.”

Sheppard was already running towards the gym, and he used his comms instead of shouting to say, “Get out of here.” He got to the gym, which literally looked like a bomb went off, and Schneider and Aaron were there trying to pull rubble off of two people that Sheppard couldn’t see. “What are you doing? I gave you an order.”

Schneider was the one who answered, his hands working as he spoke, and Sheppard joined them in trying to clear out the rubble. “We weren’t going to leave them behind, sir.”

Sheppard understood that, even as furious as he was about them disregarding his order. “We have under two minutes. Can we get both of them out in that time?”

“No sir.” The two of them pulled off a particularly large piece of rock, roughness scraping against his palm, revealing a scientist Sheppard knew he should know the name of. There was one stone left, pinning his left leg, and the scientist was unconscious, but he was alive. “Only him.”

“Then we’re getting him out and barricading ourselves in.” Schneider and Aaron heaved the last stone off of the scientist, Sheppard pulling him out, and the three of them dragged him behind the biggest pile of rubble away from the door. Setting a hand against the wall, Sheppard closed his eyes, his brain connecting with Atlantis. It was dangerous, losing connection with reality even a little bit at the moment, but he needed this more.

_Keep us safe. Please._

There was the feeling of relief _fear_ hope, and pain, so much pain, he was in the place of pain, and she was sluggish here, struggling, but the door closed, clicked, a shield going up, and then everything exploded into agony.

—

“We found Lorne outside of the shield. His ship was damaged but whole enough to keep itself afloat.” Sheppard nodded, gesturing for Rodney to keep going. “We lost five Marines, two anthropologists, a botanist, and a physicist in the East pier, and another two Marines with the ATA gene in the jumper fight. We have another twenty injured, including you, but _I am not one of them, so let me out of the goddamn infirmary_.” The last words were directed at the closest nurse, who turned to scowl at him.

“You have second degree burns across your chest and upper arms. We need to make sure you don’t get an infection.”

Rodney scowled back at her, then took a huge bite of jello. “I have more important things to do than sit around in the infirmary. Though you, Colonel, need to stop running around and actually stay here for a while.”

At the moment, Shepaprd wasn’t even up for arguing with that. “Did you guys fix the ZPM, at least? Get it to stop broadcasting?”

“We did that the first time we plugged it in during the attack. What we were trying to do was keep it from overheating.”

“Which you did?”

Rodney rolled his eyes, jamming more jello in his mouth. “Of course we did, or we wouldn’t have plugged it in again. From what we can tell, the ZedPM was a prototype—it holds a lot more power, but they never actually finished making it, which means that it didn’t have most of the safeguards that ZPMs are supposed to have. Based on where we found it, I think it was one of the million last ditch efforts to find a way to defeat the Wraith. The problem was that it was basically leaking—it was letting out a form a radiation that Wraith sensors are extremely effective at picking up.”

“So it’s not going to blow up?”

He sent Sheppard a put-upon look. “No, it’s not going to blow up. Or at least it shouldn’t. We’re still running tests.”

“Okay.” Sheppard dropped his head back against the pillow, everything starting to gray from exhaustion. “Next time, let’s try not to blow up any of Atlantis.”

“You can pin that one on the Wraith, not on me.” He grimaced, shifting slightly. “Try not to burn your brain up, Colonel. The city needs you. Not quite as much it needs me, but probably on par with Zelenka.”

He was already slipping to sleep, but he managed, “Thanks, McKay.”

“Any time, Colonel.” And then he was asleep.


	16. Report 8: Jack O'Neill

> [Lieutenant] General Jack O’Neill was the original SG-1. Before Apophis came through the Stargate, before the Stargate Program was established, he took the first steps through the Stargate onto Abydos and established Earth’s first contact with non-Earthborn humans. Some say it was what saved the Earth. Sometimes, with what happened, it is difficult say if that is true.

-Oscar Cho, author of _The Chasm_

 

> It is difficult to place Lieutenant General Jack O’Neill on one side or the other of having saved the world. Those who side with him argue that, were it not for him, the Earth would have been destroyed without anyone knowing that it was even in danger. He played a large role in stopping Apophis; he stopped Anubis; he stopped the Replicators. Those against him argue that most of those threats would not have existed without him.

-Jason Clarke, author of _Saving the World_

 

> Rumors of a sexual relationship between General O’Neill and General Carter began after one of their earliest missions together. Piecing together what exactly happened on that mission is close to impossible; as with many missions completed by SG teams, and especially SG-1, the details are still classified. By most indications from reliable reports, that was not the time when their relationship truly began.
> 
> There are three times that most academics place as the beginning of their relationship. The first is immediately following a mission that left then-Major Carter severely injured fighting what some inside sources referred to as a “super soldier.” During that mission, while the Major was being hunted by the super soldier, then-Colonel O’Neill rescued her, killing the super soldier and saving her life. The second is following Colonel O’Neill’s removal from a medical coma after the Battle of Antarctica in March 2004. The last is after the death of General Carter’s father and the subsequent transfer of General O’Neill to Homeworld Security and General Carter—temporarily—to a research facility.
> 
> This last theory is thought to be the most probable, as it was the first them when General Carter was not directly under General O’Neill’s command.

-Helen Orrel, author of _Stargate Command_ and _The Saviors of the Stars_

 

> He was the hero of the Stargate Program, you know. He went further, fought harder, do more than any of us could even consider. We were all in awe of him, and of SG-1. They literally saved the world, and kept saving the world, and we all stood around in the background, shooting things when they needed us to….
> 
> That isn’t fair, really. We did a lot of work, and they never made us feel like we weren’t doing enough. They just…did what they did, and it was usually enough. And when it wasn’t, they fixed it the next time they tried. And, honestly, we all hated them for it. Because how can you compete with people who are _always_ better, _always_ succeeding? You can’t.
> 
> I guess what I’m trying to say that we were all glad as hell that they existed, no matter if sometimes we resented the hell out of them. Because without SG-1, without General O’Neill, none of us would be standing here today.

-Interview with retired Captain Jeffrey Arnold

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...the planned next chapter isn't happening, because it was kicking my ass and wasn't contributing anything to the plot anyway. So the next chapter is going to be another report chapter, and then we're back to Atlantis.
> 
> I keep wanting to skip to book 2, but I need to finish this one first. Book 2 is so much slashier, though, and so much more fun to write.


	17. Report 8: Pegasus

> The thing that everybody knew and nobody talked about was that there were three groups of people on the Atlantis Expedition.
> 
> The most recent people—those who had come when the city had been flown back to the Pegasus Galaxy or who had been additions or replacements after the fact—were new generation. They hadn’t faced the Replicators, hadn’t seen Michael, hadn’t faced times with basically zero power and no hope of finding a ZPM. They didn’t know the scale of loss that was possible when everything went wrong.
> 
> The people before that—those who had come from the Daedalus or the Apollo after the connection was reestablished—were old generation. A lot of them had faced the Replicators, had been on the city when it flew from Lantea and dropped out in the middle of nowhere or been on the Apollo when they thought their city was lost. They had had their world literally shatter around them, had raced against time and a Wraith ship to save the Earth. And then they had decided to come back.
> 
> And then there was the last group. The first wave. The people who had left on a suicide mission that they had no way of knowing if they would ever survive the first day of. They had stayed through the shortages, the threats of Wraith attacks, the fear, the loss. They had been trapped with a group of people they didn’t know in a city that was trying to kill them, and for whatever reason, they had decided to stay. And, more than anything else, they had left expecting to die, and then had to learn to live with living.

-From the speech “Understanding Atlantis” to the Air Force Academy

> Before the arrival of the Expedition from Earth, the societies of Pegasus were literally moving backwards. The peoples held themselves back from technological advancement to keep off of the radar of the Wraith, who destroyed any who attempted to strive towards anything. Though they had means of instantaneous travel between planets, anti-Wraith cooperation seemed never to cross their minds, leaving them fractured and weak in the face of a far superior enemy.

-David Kay, author of _The Human Supremacy_

> To write about the Pegasus Galaxy, a place that has been visited by only a few hundred people from Earth, without being one of those people is arrogant to the point of absurdity. To think that one can know about these millions of people with no context, to critique the backwardness of their cultures without having a frame of reference for the atrocities being faced, is simply a continuation of blatant imperialism. It is the same as fifteenth century academics in their ivory towers in Oxford or Venice discussing the barbarism of peoples in Africa or South America without having ever set foot outside of Europe.

-Rachel Heinberg, author of _The Arrogance of Man_


	18. 9

Rodney would be happy if he never saw a piece of rock again.

Of course, that was kind of a general feeling with him—he wasn’t a huge fan or rocks, or dirt, or mud, or the sun, or people—but his hatred had only grown in recent days. The East Pier was basically a pile of rubble with some part of an outer shell keeping it from totally disintegrating in on itself, which meant that, among other things, he and a team of mostly uninjured Marines and shaken scientists had to sort through the wreckage to separate out rocks from tech.

“Doc.”

Rodney looked up from his tablet at Lorne, who was taking part in this against medical advice. Military people were all alike. It was kind of absurd. At least Rodney was smart enough to take the good drugs when they were being offered. “What?”

“I found something.”

Fantastic. “What is it?”

Lorne shook his gauze-covered head. “Not sure.”

For the love of God. “Animal, vegetable, or mineral?”

Lorne grinned. “I think it’s the part of a larger machine—or was.”

“Give it to Zelenka.”

Lorne picked up whatever it was that he thought was so fascinating then froze, holding it away from his body like he thought it was going to bite. “It’s glowing.”

Rodney had already been turning back to his tablet to try to map out the mess they were wading through, but he looked up at that, hurrying over to Lorne and whatever he had managed to turn on. Because he really didn’t want to blow up the rest of the city. The thing in Lorne’s hand was small and rectangular, the visible part cordoned off into four equal rectangles, one of which was glowing blue. Rodney held his tablet over it, reading the screen for a second. “Okay, it’s not giving off any energy signature. Can you feel anything from it?”

“No.” Lorne swallowed. “Could be because of my concussion, but I don’t think it’s doing anything.”

“Other than glowing.”

Lorne nodded. “Right.”

Rodney looked around for a second, then spotted what looked like it should be a stable pile of rocks not to far from them. He wasn’t sure if that was even a real thing, stable piles of rocks—every time he got near rocks off-world, they collapsed and dropped him or Sheppard into some cavern—but it was the closest thing they were going to have to a standing table in the East Pier for the near future, so they were could to have to work with what they had. “Walk over there slowly, Major, and put it down. Assuming it doesn’t blow up or turn one of us into an orangutan, I’m going to have someone without the gene pack it up for further study.”

Eyebrows raised, Lorne asked, “Are either of those possibilities likely?”

Weren’t military people supposed to be good at following orders and not asking questions? “It’s Ancient, Major, I have no idea what is likely. Now move, please. I’d rather it not be on for longer than absolutely necessary, which even a military grunt like you should be able to figure out.”

Lorne didn’t respond, which was just as well because Rodney wasn’t particularly in the mood for tearing their temporary military apart—bizarre, he knew, but he hadn’t slept in some absurd period of time and really just wanted to get this done so he could make sure Sheppard hadn’t managed to kill himself in his sleep. And also, the painkillers were wearing off, which meant that his chest was starting to really hurt. Instead, Rodney just tracked Lorne’s walk to the pile, watching his hands to make sure they were steady just in case the thing was really a bomb. He had good hands, strong-looking, with long fingers. He was also surprisingly not moronic person for a member of the U.S. military, though he did have the weird habit of calling Rodney ‘Doc’.

The object down safely, Lorne took a step back. “Didn’t blow us up.”

“Thank you, Major, for that keen insight.” Rodney waved a hand, eyes fixed on the object, which was fortunately no longer glowing. “Keep searching, please. I’d rather finish this before next year.”

Lorne laughed, which was weird because Rodney hadn’t actually been trying to be funny, but it didn’t really matter, because Rodney was busy.

—

Sheppard looked small, where he was sleeping in the infirmary, and somehow both old and young at the same time. Rodney had never been sure how that worked, how one person could look both twenty and seventy simultaneously when they weren’t suffering from the effect of some alien device, but Sheppard was the master at pulling it off.

Asleep, the lines that usually crossed his face, the ones that Rodney knew meant he was worried that no matter what he did not everyone would survive—knew, because he saw the same lines in the mirror—were gone, replaced by pain lines that Rodney wanted to smooth out but couldn’t for more reasons than he could name. Because Sheppard wasn’t supposed to show that he was in pain; he hid it, and Rodney wasn’t sure how to deal with him not hiding it. It was part of what kept Rodney going when things got bad, knowing that Sheppard wIould always—absurdly, ridiculously—pretend that things hadn’t gone to hell in a hand basket.

A heavy hand clapped down on his shoulder, and Rodney jerked, twisting away to stare up at Ronon, who was standing over him, looking large and tan and significantly more put-together than Rodney felt. Which was not all that unusual.

“You should sleep.”

Rodney rolled his eyes, poking at his tablet. He wasn’t done anything productive, but he was good at looking like he was. “I’m busy.”

Ronon shoved his shoulder, which was more like shoving it, because Ronon had apparently never learned to temper his strength. “You haven’t slept in days.”

“I’m _busy_.”

Snatching the tablet out of Rodney’s hand, Ronon moved over to the side of his chair. “No, you’re not. You need sleep.” Rodney grabbed for the tablet, and Ronon held it out of reach, tall enough that even if Rodney was standing, he wouldn’t be able to get it. Not that Rodney was particularly up for standing at the moment. His chest and arms were really starting to hurt. Ronon jerked his head towards Sheppard. “He would want you to sleep.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Ronon shot him one of the inscrutable looks Pegasus aliens seemed to be so good at, and Rodney gritted his teeth. “I wish I had never found the ZPM.” He hadn’t known he was going to say until the words came out of his mouth.

Ronon looked down at him. “No, you don’t.”

No, he didn’t. He knew he should want it, but this might be the first time in years that they had enough power to do what they needed to do without risking the city. But so many people had been hurt, so many people had died. _His people_.

So he wasn’t going to sleep for a long, long time. Not until he made up for the fact that he had just caused so many deaths, and maybe not even then, because that was when the nightmares showed up. Limbs under rocks and exploding nadquadah generators and not enough time to save everyone. Sheppard alive when there’s no way in hell he should be, bleeding out of every orifice Rodney could see, three people shaking next to him like they were about to rattle themselves apart, refusing to say what had just happened.

Ronon’s hand clamped on his shoulder again, just above where his burns ended, and he flinched out of the memory, coming back to himself. Yeah, he wasn’t sleeping.

“I’ll sit with him.”

Rodney glared at him. “I’ve got it. And if you’ll just give me my tablet back, I can get back to work.”

“Not happening.”

Rodney’s voice rose, going embarrassingly high. “Give me my _fucking—_ ”

“Wha’s going on?”

His teeth snapped shut so fast he nearly bit his tongue off as Sheppard’s eyelids peered back just enough for him to stare, eyes slitted, at the two of them. Rodney shook his head. “Sorry. Go back to sleep.”

Sheppard blinked at him. “You still in the infirmary?”

“Just getting some work done.”

His head shook back and forth on the pillow, loose enough that Rodney knew he had to have some pretty strong drugs in his system. “Still…burns?”

Oh. “They let me out.”

Ronon shot him a look that told him he knew Rodney had checked out AMA. But Rodney had a good reason to, and it wasn’t like he was like Lorne, who had a concussion. And they were going to be able to do much for him anyway, other than give him some pain medication, and if he was on pain medication he couldn’t do anything productive anyway.

“Tired.”

“You’re perfectly welcome to pass out again at any time.”

Sheppard’s hand twitched like he was trying to wave at Rodney. Which was weird, because usually Rodney was the one who did hand gestures, and Sheppard just looked on, smirking. “You. Tired.”

Apparently it was bad enough that even drugged up Sheppard could see it. Not that that meant Rodney was going sleep, but he was going to figure out how to hide it better. “I’m fine, Sheppard. Get some sleep.”

There was another twitch of Sheppard’s hand, and then he closed his eyes and from all indication passed out again.

Ronon narrowed his eyes. “See?”

“Yes, I see, Sheppard is delirious and high on pain medication. I’m not sure what that’s supposed to have proven to me, but give me my computer back so I can do something more productive with my time than sit here arguing with you.”

“No.”

“Damn it.”

Ronon just stared at him. “No.”

This was ridiculous. Rodney got to his feet, stumbling a little as his legs protested the sudden weight. “Fine, then. I’m going back to the East Pier.”

Ronon got in his way, planting himself between Rodney and the only way past the bed. “No.”

“Seriously?”

Ronon shrugged. “Sheppard’s injured. Lorne’s injured. I’m not going to let you get more injured.”

Rodney opened his mouth to argue, then stopped when his headset crackled in his ear. “McKay. We have a problem.”

Fantastic. “What is it, Zelenka?”

“The device that Major Lorne found, it is glowing again.”

“Did anyone with the gene get near it?”

“Do you think I am idiot? No, you and I have been only ones near it since it was found, and believe me when I say I did not turn it on.”

“I’ll be there in a minute. Don’t let anyone touch it.”

It sounded like Zelenka said something to him in Czech, but Rodney didn’t really care. He could get the man have his last word. They both knew Rodney was smarter, and that was what mattered.

Ronon shot him an irritated look when he tried to get past to head town to the lab where Zelenka was working. “You still need rest.”

“I need to keep the city from being blown up by whatever it is Lorne found. I’ll sleep later.” He glanced back at Sheppard and almost said something more—look after him, don’t let him die in his sleep, tell him I didn’t just desert him—but that would have been sappy,and he wasn’t sappy, so he stayed quiet and pushed past Ronon, who finally let him go.

—

Some time later, there was a call over the headset that sent Rodney sitting bolt upright, his shoulders and neck protesting that he had been sitting hunched over a laptop for hours. “Rodney, Mr. Woolsey would like you to come to the conference room.”

Rodney blinked at the clock on his laptop—wow, he did not know it was that late, or early, depending on how you wanted to look at it—then pressed a finger to his earbud, saying, “I’m busy.” They hadn’t gotten the thing to stop glowing yet, or even really figured out why it was glowing considering that nobody with the natural ATA gene was anywhere near it, and Rodney’s gene was nowhere strong enough for him to turn stuff on by accident. “Whatever it is, I’m sure you can manage without me, as hard as that might be for you to imagine.”

Teyla sounded amused when she responded, which was good, considering that he had probably just insulted her. Which he generally tried to avoid doing, because she could kick his ass without thinking about it, and everyone would take her side. “Cannot Dr. Zelenka do the work while you are in the meeting? And I do believe Dr. Keller instructed you to sleep, or did you do that while you were in the lab?”

Damn Keller for telling them that. And he didn’t need sleep. He was surviving perfectly well on caffeine. “Fine. I’ll be there soon.” With his laptop, so he could keep monitoring the readings Zelenka was getting. He looked up at Zelenka, who looked like he was basically unconscious where he was sitting, and snapped, “Eyes up front.”

Zelenka started, then blinked at him, rubbing his eyes and taking a long drink of what had to be two-hour-old coffee; Rodney felt a brief surge of guilt for making him work so long on about as little sleep as Rodney, but he was the only other scientist Rodney trusted to not blow the city up, which meant that he needed to keep working. Because with the mess that the city was in now—which wasn’t Rodney’s fault; there was no way he was going to have been able to get that ZPM working in time—they needed to get things working as quickly as possible. As they stood right now, with Sheppard unconscious twenty-three hours a day, Lorne seriously concussed, and Beckett off saving the galaxy from the flu, they had no one who could run the chair and were down two of their best pilots, which meant that if they were attacked, they were basically screwed. Add that to the total lack of shielding in the East Pier at the moment and whatever exposed tech might be lying around waiting to be stepped on or hit with salt water, the whole city might go up in flames without them being able to do anything to stop it.

So as much as he wanted to sleep, neither of them could. Not yet.

Zelenka blinked at him again, and Rodney realized he had been sitting there staring at him for who knew how long. Which meant that he really needed more caffeine. “Perhaps we should have others work on project. Woman who speaks with her hands, she is intelligent, no?”

Claire. Right. She was probably sleeping, had been ordered to do so, but she had been useful when it came to the ZedPM work. They should really have her work in the main lab more, though that would mean they would need to make sure other people learned LSQ. Which would have to wait until they were no longer about to die. “Yeah. Call her down here. I have to go.”

“And then do not come back until you sleep. You are getting inefficient, and you will make mistakes.”

He was Rodney McKay; he didn’t make mistakes. But Zelenka might have a point. Not that he was going to admit that, at least out loud.

By the time he got to the conference room, Teyla, Ronon, Lorne, and Woolsey were already in there, sitting in this usual spots around the table. It was weird to see the gap where Sheppard usually sat—or lounged—but he was probably still sleeping in the infirmary. Which was a good thing; they all needed him to get better as fast as he could. Lorne nodded to him, and Teyla smiled, and Ronon looked like he was cleaning his gun, which made absolutely no sense to Rodney considering that it wasn’t a mechanical gun. But he was too tired to question it.

Woolsey let out a small sigh at the sight of Rodney’s laptop, but launched into the meeting with, “Now that we’re all here, I’d like to discuss the plan moving forward for the immediate future.”

Hadn’t they just done that? “I thought we had a plan. Teyla and Ronon will go with Lorne and…Lieutenant something for now. Until Sheppard’s better.”

“Unfortunately,” Woolsey replied, “with Colonel Sheppard now entirely incapacitated for the time being, we must make the decision whether to allow the military second in command—Major Lorne—to leave Atlantis.”

“I don’t see what the problem with that would be.”

Woolsey’s eyes narrowed. “IOA regulations state that, when the military commander of Atlantis is incapacitated, his second in command is not to leave the city—”

The doors slid open, and they all turned to look as Sheppard wheeled himself into the room, dark shadows under his eyes. He looked like he hadn’t slept for a month, which was usually the situation when it came to Sheppard, but he had actually been sleeping, so that was a bit weird.

Sheppard wheeled his way up to the table, slouching like it was any old day. “Heard you were running a meeting without me.”

Rodney scoffed at him. “It’s not like you like to come to meetings, anyway?”

Sheppard smirked at him. “Maybe I’m turning over a new leaf.”

Woolsey sighed in the direction of both of them, which was impressive considering that they weren’t even sitting near each other. “Now that you’re here, can we return to the meeting?”

Rodney waved a hand at them. “Yeah, the meeting, go on. Then I can get back to work.”

“That is something else we need to discuss, but first let’s return to the matter at hand.”

Sheppard nodded. “Sending Lorne out. Right. Go for it. Lorne, you have my permission to conduct off-world missions as usual, etcetera, etcetera.”

Woolsey grimaced at him. “As I was saying, IOA regulations require that—”

“I’m fit for duty,” Sheppard said, and it was so obviously a lie that Rodney wasn’t sure why he even tried. “See?”

“What I see is our military commander in a wheelchair.”

“This?” Sheppard looked at it like he wasn’t sure where it had come from. “This is just to keep Keller happy. I’m fine.”

Woolsey sighed, then looked at Lorne. “Are you okay with this?”

Lorne looked at him, then at Sheppard, then back at Woolsey. “I follow the orders of my commanding officer.”

“Which means…?”

Lorne glanced at Sheppard, who waved his hand. “It means I want to get off this city and onto land that isn’t trying to kill me.”

Woolsey nodded. “Fair enough. Tomorrow, nine-thirty, your team including Ms. Emmagan and Mr. Dex, has a go for M2X-374.” He stood. “That’s all for now. Dr. McKay, get some sleep, or I’m going to have Dr. Keller sedate you. Thank you.” And then he walked out of the room.


End file.
